Masculinity in the Work of Elizabeth Gaskell [1 ed.] 9783030483968, 9783030483975, 3030483967

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Masculinity in the Work of Elizabeth Gaskell Meghan Lowe

Masculinity in the Work of Elizabeth Gaskell

Meghan Lowe

Masculinity in the Work of Elizabeth Gaskell

Meghan Lowe St Andrews, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-48396-8 ISBN 978-3-030-48397-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48397-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: ‘Shakespeare and the Musical Glasses’ in Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters, An Every-Day Story (London: Smith Elder, 1866), Volume 1, facing p. 181 This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

Firstly, I am indebted to James MacPherson, whose generous fellowship allowed me to pursue my doctoral research, which has been adapted for this book. For their keen insights and invaluable feedback, I wish to thank my PhD examiners Chris Louttit and Gregory Tate. Thanks are due to the entire School of English at the University of St Andrews, particularly Christine Rauer, Clare Gill, Katie Garner, and Tom Jones, for their enthusiasm and mentorship. Many librarians deserve profound thanks, and I wish particularly to thank Nancy Weyant, Gaskell bibliographer extraordinaire, and Emma Marigliano, of Manchester’s Portico Library, for helping me with any and all queries. For their warm welcome to the world of Gaskell, the Gaskell Society, and The Gaskell Journal, I would like to thank Alan Shelston, Janet Allan, Elizabeth Williams, Rebecca Styler, and Linsey Parkinson. I will forever be grateful to Elizabeth and her husband Brian, as well as the Portico’s team, for their generosity of spirit in helping to make Gaskell’s house and the library such meaningful parts of my life and my wedding day. This book has been many years in the making, starting in independent study projects at Mount Holyoke College, where Amy Martin and Jenny Pyke forever changed the way I read, write, and think. Amy and Jenny, along with Elissa Gelfand and Francisco Fagundes, inspired my passion for literature and research and have never ceased to offer me calm guidance and heartfelt emotional and academic support. v

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For their help in turning my manuscript into a book, I would like to thank Jack Heeney, Sham Anand, Ashwini Elango, and Eileen Srebernik at Palgrave, as well as Shirley Foster and Francesco Marroni for their thorough and thoughtful feedback. My mom’s enthusiasm for language and literature is infectious, and I cannot thank her enough for patiently reading this book countless times with a keen eye for detail and loving encouragement. She and my grandmother Mimi have been my unwavering pillars of support and have nurtured my love of reading since I was born, and words cannot express how much they mean to me. Warm thanks are also due to my dad, John, Lauren, Ann, Matthew, Matt, Jen, Simon, and Peachy as well as the extended Healy, Isett, and Lowe clans, for their understanding and love throughout this process. I could never have undertaken this project without the, laughter, empathy, and many cups of tea with friends, and I would like to wholeheartedly thank Brittany Fallon, Amy Eberlin, Nimisha Bhat, Jacalyn Gorczynski, Allyson Schmidt, Victoria Parkinson, and Betsy Andrews for their camaraderie and encouragement. Working on this book has been an exhilarating time, as Phill and I have celebrated the birth of our son Toby, who fills our lives with joy; it has also been a devastating time of loss, and I wish to commemorate my grandfather Pop Isett and dear friend Anna-Winona Struck. This book would not have been possible without two Phillips: the first is my PhD supervisor, Phillip Mallet. I give my sincere gratitude to Phillip, who has been incredibly supportive and helpful; he has been an indefatigable source of guidance and knowledge, and I cannot thank him enough for being so generous with his time, advising me on any matter within seconds, even in his retirement. The second is my best friend, the love of my life, and my husband, Phillip Lowe. Though I may have Gaskell to thank for bringing me to Manchester in the first place, I have Phill to thank for everything else. He is, to borrow from Gaskell, my fiercely loyal ‘bulldog in breeches’ and my ‘wise man of science in love’; put simply, falling in love with him is the best thing to ever happen to me. Phill has transformed my academic mind, challenging the way I think about masculinity and showing me what it truly means to be a man and a gentleman; more importantly, he has transformed my life, giving me more support and comfort than I can ever repay. He has offered me unconditional love and understanding every step of the way, from the early days of my PhD to the frazzled final stages of proofreading while raising a newborn during a pandemic, and he

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never ceases to amaze me with his ability to selflessly give up his time and energy to calm, encourage, and inspire me. I do not have enough words to express my thanks adequately, but I wish to dedicate this book to him as a start.

Contents

1

1

Introduction

2

Working-Class Masculinity in Mary Barton

25

3

Men, Gentlemen, Masters, and Hands in North and South

57

4

Intertextual Masculinities in The Scarlet Letter and Ruth

105

5

Models of Masculinity in David Copperfield and Cousin Phillis

129

6

Historic Masculinities in Sylvia’s Lovers

149

7

Husbands and Sons: Masculinity in Wives and Daughters

183

Conclusion

213

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References

217

Index

227 ix

Abbreviations

The abbreviations below follow the standard abbreviations used in The Gaskell Journal for references to Gaskell’s works and letters. References to the novels are to the Oxford editions; full publication details are listed in the references section. CP Further Letters LCB Letters MB MC NS RU SL WD

Cousin Phillis Further Letters of Mrs. Gaskell Life of Charlotte Brontë The Letters of Mrs Gaskell Mary Barton The Moorland Cottage and Other Stories North and South Ruth Sylvia’s Lovers Wives and Daughters

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Given the feminine-centred titles of Mary Barton, Ruth, Cousin Phillis , and Wives and Daughters , it is not surprising that critics have devoted much attention to Elizabeth Gaskell’s depiction of women.1 Alan Shelston, for example, writes of Gaskell’s early works as focusing on social change and its implications for women and points to titles of later works, such as My Lady Ludlow, The Grey Woman, and Sylvia’s Lovers , which ‘identify her as a novelist of women’s experience’ (Shelston 2010, viii, xiii). This categorisation is apt, for Gaskell gives sympathetic treatment to a range of women, from young women and fallen women to spinsters and widows, working-class and middle-class women alike. Further, although she signed most letters as ‘E.C. Gaskell’, she was widely known to contemporaries—and many readers thereafter—as ‘Mrs Gaskell’. Though such a name conformed to Victorian conventions—joining her with Mrs Oliphant, Mrs Craik, and Mrs Henry Wood (Shelston 2010, 43)—it also has the effect of making her sound matronly, safe, ‘conventional and soothing’ (Schor 1992, 4). This matronly name, rather than a pseudonym, makes it seem a natural consequence that she became known as a woman writer depicting the female experience. To confine her to this simple categorisation is, however, limiting. Gaskell complicates and nuances not only notions of womanhood and figures such as the unmarried mother but also questions of manliness and figures ranging from industrialists and doctors to marginalised men, from the poor labourers and murderous working class to the deformed male. © The Author(s) 2020 M. Lowe, Masculinity in the Work of Elizabeth Gaskell, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48397-5_1

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Gaskell herself resists simple categorisation. In an 1850 letter, she writes that she has a ‘great number’ of ‘Mes’ and notes, ‘that’s the plague’: One of my mes is, I do believe, a true Christian—(only people call her socialist and communist), another of my mes is a wife and mother, and highly delighted at the delight of everyone else in the house, Meta and William most especially who are in full extasy. Now that’s my ‘social’ self I suppose. Then again I’ve another self with a full taste for beauty and convenience whh [sic] is pleased on its own account. How am I to reconcile all these warring members? I try to drown myself (my first self,) by saying it’s Wm [William] who is to decide on all these things, and his feeling it right ought to be my rule, And so it is—only that does not quite do…Yes that discovery of one’s exact work in the world is the puzzle: I never meant to say it was not. I long (weakly) for the old times where right and wrong did not seem such complicated matters; and I am sometimes coward enough to wish that we were back in the darkness where obedience was the only seen duty of women. Only even then I don’t believe William would ever have commanded me. (Letters , 108–109)

Her musings emanate from feelings of selfishness as she and William had just acquired their large, expensive house at Plymouth Grove at a time when ‘so many are wanting’, but her emphasis on a multiplicity of ‘mes’ could just as easily apply to her role as a writer, for she cannot be confined to one label of industrial novelist, domestic realist, biographer, or historical fiction writer. Though she does not list ‘writer’ as one of her ‘mes’, this notion of a fractured self rings true throughout her written work as well as her life. Further, while contemplating issues of identity, Gaskell considers issues of gender and authority, particularly the relational role between men and women. Gaskell herself only saw her role as wife and mother as one of her ‘mes’, so it would seem to ‘drown’ some of her other selves in reducing her to ‘Mrs Gaskell’. Just as this naming practice is restrictive in confining Gaskell to the wifely element of her identity, it is equally limiting to view her only as a woman writing about women, for much of Gaskell’s writing revolves around nuanced issues of masculinity and manliness. Gaskell turns to quoting Thomas Carlyle on the title page of her first novel, Mary Barton (1848), and a quotation from Carlyle seems fitting as an introduction to Gaskell’s approach to masculinity. His 1831 statement,

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‘The old ideal of manhood has grown obsolete and the new is still invisible to us, and we grope after it, one clutching this phantom, another that’ (Carlyle 1899, 29), exemplifies the difficulty that Victorians faced in defining the masculine ideal. Mid-nineteenth-century England underwent great social change in the face of industrialisation, changing working and living conditions, and voting reforms, and with those changes came new conceptions of masculinity and what it meant to be a man and a gentleman. As Phillip Mallett points out, ‘old versions of manhood and manliness, bound up with aristocratic notions of rank and honour, began to lose their hold’ (Mallett 2015, vii) and this search for a new ideal was ‘embedded in a wider narrative of struggle and anxiety in an age self-conscious about change’ (ix). Herbert Sussman, too, turns to Carlyle’s famous quotation to argue that Carlyle ‘saw as the inadequacy of each of the several competing styles of masculinity available in the 1840s, the absence of any single formation of manliness to which a man might surrender himself’ (Sussman 1995, 70). The question of manliness is particularly relevant to the works of Elizabeth Gaskell, which span class, region, time, and genre to grapple with ideas of masculinity in the working class, middle class, and landed aristocracy as she gropes after and clutches at a new ideal of manhood. Just as the feminist movement has argued that femininity is a social construct, Gaskell’s varied writing highlights the fact that masculinity is likewise socially constructed and thus varies historically and culturally. Ultimately, her work shows that there cannot be one new ideal of manhood but rather, just as there are a range of ‘mes’ in Gaskell’s identity, a range of masculinities that change over time and place. From her first novel, Mary Barton, Gaskell stakes her claim to depicting manliness: ‘John Barton’ was the original title of the book. Round the character of John Barton all the others formed themselves; he was my hero, the person with whom all my sympathies went, with whom I tried to identify myself at the time, because I believed from personal experience that such men were not uncommon… (Letters , 74)

Not only does she identify and sympathise with working-class men, but she also uses her novels as a means to explore issues of gentlemanliness; in North and South (1854), for example, John Thornton declares, ‘I am

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rather weary of this word “gentlemanly,” which seems to me to be often inappropriately used, and often, too, with such exaggerated distortion of meaning, while the full simplicity of the noun “man,” and the adjective “manly” are unacknowledged—that I am induced to class it with the cant of the day’ (NS, 164). Though Margaret believes the term ‘gentleman’ includes the ‘true man’, Thornton dismisses ‘gentleman’ as solely a relational term; issues of status, interiority, character, and class are wrapped up in the debate of ‘man vs. gentleman’. For the Victorians, John Tosh writes, ‘The difference between gentlemanliness and manliness was critical’ (Tosh 2005, 97); Gaskell draws attention to the timeliness of this debate with ‘the cant of the day’. Further, throughout her works, she pays marked attention to the ways in which masculinity is unstable and changes over time. One senses that Gaskell is pushing her readers to identify one of her ‘mes’ as a theorist of manliness when, in her conceptualisation of masculinity in her final novel, Wives and Daughters (1864–1866), she presents Preston musing: He felt at once…that [his] conduct [and his] threats…were just what no gentleman, no honourable man, no manly man, could put up with in any one about him. He knew that much, and he wondered how she, the girl standing before him, had been clever enough to find it out. He forgot himself for an instant in admiration of her. (WD, 507)

This interrogation of Preston’s conduct is an interrogation of his masculinity: categories of the gentleman, of honour, and of manliness are at stake. Further, Gaskell emphasises the significance of understanding what it means to be a gentleman, an honourable man, and a manly man, for Preston stops short in admiration of Molly’s cleverness. By making it clear that understanding manliness is of the utmost importance, Gaskell bolsters her legacy not only as a novelist of the female experience but also as a novelist of masculinity.

Masculinity Studies Phillip Mallett points out that, were Carlyle writing in the 1890s, he would have to ‘acknowledge that there was and could be no monolithic “ideal of Manhood” neither as a goal to be embraced, nor as a standard no individual man can live up to or fulfil, but rather a diversity of masculinities’ (Mallett 2015, xii). The end of the nineteenth century

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witnessed, as Mallett notes, many legal, professional, and cultural changes that combined to create ‘threats from every angle’ to masculinity and a prevalence of gender instability (x). This notion of a ‘threat’ to the ideal of manhood is important because, though Carlyle’s claim about the obsolescence of the old ideal of manhood rings true for Victorian authors such as Gaskell, it continues to be relevant today. Judith Gardiner writes that the notion of ‘masculinity in crisis’ in contemporary society stems partly from more women in the workplace, a reduced emphasis on physical strength, and feminism’s questioning of male dominance; she argues that the effects of the ‘masculinity crisis’ include male distress, anxiety, suicide, and criminality (Gardiner 2002, 7). Gardiner argues, however, that ‘[m]asculinity is a nostalgic formation, always missing, lost, or about to be lost, its ideal form located in a past that advances with each generation in order to recede just beyond its grasp’ (10). She contends, ‘the language of a “masculinity crisis” falsifies history by implying there was once a golden time of unproblematic, stable gender, when men were men, women were women, and everyone was happy with their social roles—“the way we never were”’ (14). Likewise, Stephen Whitehead writes, ‘we should be wary of talking up a crisis of masculinity…men are not a predictable, homogenous group…First, we should recognize the multiple ways of being a man and the multiple masculinities now available to men in this, the post-modern, age. There can be no prevailing, singular masculinity in crisis’ (Whitehead 2002, 3). Masculinity, he notes, is ‘under constant revision, negotiation and movement’ (4). Victorian writers such as Gaskell reveal that there is no uniform guide for ‘manly’ or ‘masculine’ behaviour. Just as feminism has helped to show that notions of femininity are subject to historical and cultural change, literary critics, social historians, and gender theorists have recently begun addressing the fact that masculinity is likewise neither monolithic, static, nor essentialist. Feminism has helped to establish the notion of a multiplicity of masculinities, historically specific and culturally diverse, fluid and changing. With regard to Victorian studies, Clinton Machann notes that in the 1990s, feminism was dominant and foundational, supported by writers such as Elaine Showalter, Sandra Gilbert, Susan Gubar, Mary Poovey, and Margaret Homans; that said, he notes, ‘even if one accepted the idea that feminine experience was systematically ignored or suppressed within the old paradigm of supposed universal human experience, it was by no means clear that gendered masculine experience had been adequately or authentically explored within that paradigm’ (Machann

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2010, 14). Masculinity studies in the 1970s and 1980s proved dependent on feminist theories and was thus often taught in women’s and gender studies programmes (Gardiner 2002, 2). It gradually evolved to become informed by both feminist and queer theory (Gardiner 2002, x), and it was only in the 1990s that considerable writing about heterosexual masculinity as a social construct began to emerge (Whitehead 2002, 6– 7). Both genders are now examined as social constructions, differentiated from sex as a biological condition (Lee 2007, 17). As Phillip Mallett writes, there is ‘increasing attention to what now becomes a self-evident truth: men too have a gender’ (Mallett 2015, vi). Both masculinity and femininity are unstable categories; neither can be neatly contained. Further, both are relational concepts: ‘Neither masculinity nor femininity is a meaningful construct without the other; each defines, and is in turn defined by, the other’ (Tosh 2005, 104). Though today the terms are often used synonymously, John Tosh, in Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2005), clarifies that manliness ‘was the most clearly articulated indicator of men’s gender in the nineteenth century’ (Tosh 2005, 2) and signified attributes that men were happy to have, whereas masculinity was neutral and matterof-fact (3). Tosh makes it clear that the word ‘masculinity’, with its physical, emotional, and social attributes as well as ‘the interiority of being, or feeling, a man’, is a recent concept. Previously, it was used for ‘the legal prerogatives of the male sex (such as primogeniture)’; the abstract nouns about being a man were ‘manhood’ and ‘manliness’ and largely pertained to a man’s appearance and actions (24). Key terms in this book are also borrowed from Herbert Sussman, who employs ‘masculinity’ and ‘maleness’ for the socially constructed and ‘male’ for the essentialist (Sussman 1995, 13). He uses the plural ‘masculinities’ to emphasise ‘the multiple possibilities of such social formations, the variability in the gendering of the biological male, and the range of such constructions over time and within any specific historical moment’ (8). This multiplicity and plurality is vital, for he argues that though feminism has succeeded in ‘exploding such essentialist and monolithic thinking about women’, there is still an essentialist, ‘unitary vision of the “masculine” that…pervades and even structures discussion of men’ (8). Further, Sussman establishes an early Victorian definition of ‘maleness’ as a ‘potent yet dangerous energy’ (13) or ‘the possession of an innate, distinctively male energy’ which was not ‘necessarily sexualized’ (10). ‘Manliness’ was linked to control and discipline (13), to ‘regulating

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or managing this internal, natural energy’ (11). ‘Manhood’ was ‘selfdiscipline…the ability to control male energy’ (11), or ‘the achievement of manliness, a state of being that is not innate, but the result of arduous public or private ritual and…continued demanding self-discipline’ (13); ‘manhood’ was thus not a goal achieved by all males and was ‘conceived as an unstable equilibrium of barely controlled energy’ (13). Sussman also offers a significant definition for the ‘masculine plot’, or a ‘narrative of manhood achieved and manhood lost’; he argues, ‘For the Victorians manhood is not an essence but a plot, a condition whose achievement and whose maintenance forms a narrative over time’ (13). Like Sussman, Phillip Mallett rejects the idea of a monolithic masculinity and addresses the need to ‘consider a matrix of culturally and historically specific masculinities ’ (Mallett 2015, vi). Similarly, James Eli Adams subtitles his Dandies and Desert Saints (1995) with Styles of Victorian Masculinity, emphasising that gender identity is constructed and relational, not essentialist, and that there is ‘theatricality in all masculine self-fashioning’ (Adams 1995, 11). By viewing masculinity as socially constructed and historically specific, not as an ‘inner biological state’ (Whitehead 2002, 5), these critics have helped to dismantle notions of normative masculinity, and this book will utilise this critical framework in analysing Gaskell’s interrogation of masculinity. This book’s title could have easily echoed Tosh’s text in differentiating between ‘manliness’ and ‘masculinity’, drawn attention to a plural usage of ‘masculinities’, emphasised the distinction between ‘manliness’ and ‘gentlemanliness’ that so fascinated Gaskell, or indeed accentuated other descriptors such as ‘manhood’ and ‘maleness’; however, it only uses ‘masculinity’ as the key term, in an attempt at simplicity akin to Phillip Mallett’s The Victorian Novel and Masculinity (2015) and in an effort to focus on the aspect of gender that is socially constructed and that is interrogated consistently throughout all of Gaskell’s novels.

Why Gaskell? Many scholars have examined Gaskell’s representation of masculinity and manliness in individual works; longer works on Gaskell do explore notions of gender, but there has yet to be an extensive exploration of Gaskell’s works focused solely on masculinity. This book considers masculinities in Gaskell’s work not merely because of this void in Gaskell scholarship but

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also because of the significance of masculinity to Victorian literature more generally. Herbert Sussman, in Victorian Masculinities (1995), writes of the period from the 1830s to the 1860s as a ‘relatively unexamined moment in the history of masculinities’ (Sussman 1995, 1), beginning with the ‘drive to construct a new form of manhood and a new masculine poetic for the industrial age’ (1). Likewise, James Eli Adams notes that, as rank became more flexible, ‘social hierarchy was a more urgent preoccupation than before—largely as a consequence of its new flexibility’ (Adams 1995, 5), and ‘new forms of status’ became necessary ‘within an increasingly secular and industrialized society’ (5). Adams writes that ‘reconfigurations of masculinity frequently compensated for the loss of traditional, more assured forms of masculine identity and authority’ due to the erosion of a traditional ‘manhood’ by ‘pressures of modernity’ (5). In A Man’s Place (1999), John Tosh argues that the Victorian age presents the first time that men moved away from spending time among men to spend time at home, with wives who were associates, friends, and advisers (Tosh 2007, 53); he stresses the importance of the new notion of a companionate marriage based on love and the romantic idea of a home ‘with a woman of his choice, the pair of them alone with their children’ (28). Further, he notes the ‘serious inner contradictions’ of domesticity: a companionate marriage was based on ‘love, common values and shared interests’ but ‘belief in sexual difference was more absolute than at any time before or since’ (7). He argues that ‘[n]ever before or since [the Victorian age] has domesticity been held to be so central to masculinity’ (1) and shows that middle-class men were expected to be ‘dutiful husbands and attentive fathers, devotees of hearth and family’ (1) and that ‘only marriage could yield the full privileges of masculinity’, namely, forming and having authority and responsibility over a household (108). As Robin Gilmour makes clear in his study The Idea of the Gentleman in the Victorian Novel (1981), between the 1840s and 1880s, ‘the nature of gentlemanliness was more anxiously debated and more variously defined than at any time before or since’ (Gilmour 1981, 2). Gilmour argues, The moral component in gentlemanliness, and its social ambiguity, made it open to debate and redefinition in a way that the concept of the aristocrat was not, and if the issue became problematic in the nineteenth-century as never before, it was because in a rapidly changing society more and more

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people were becoming wealthy enough to sense the attainability of a rank that had always, in theory, been open to penetration from below…The idea of the gentleman could never have fascinated the Victorians as it did if it had been limited by caste or by a strict sense of heraldry, nor, on the other hand, if it had been a totally moralized concept, a mere synonym for the good man. It was the subtle and shifting balance between social and moral attributes that gave gentlemanliness its fascination. (3–4)

This insistence on the changing definitions of the gentleman is key. Adams argues that the ‘incessant Victorian preoccupation with defining a true gentleman’ (Adams 1995, 53) revolved around the fact that the gentleman’s status was no longer ‘secured by inherited distinctions of family and rank’ but instead through behaviour, which could be sincere or merely acted (53). In other words, as ‘gentlemanliness’ proved increasingly difficult to define, manliness took on new importance. Manly character was defined by ‘forthright self-assertion’ (74), ‘clear, direct, and forthright’ speech and writing (207), and honest, straightforward speech and action (14). Similarly, Tosh explains that manliness was associated with ‘[e]nergy, will, straightforwardness and courage’ (Tosh 2007, 111) and that most often manliness was seen as ‘the outcome of self-improvement and selfdiscipline’ rather than a ‘natural endowment’ (111). Manly qualities for the Victorians included energy, resolution, and independence (122), and there was an emphasis on self-restraint, industry, discipline, tenacity, and perseverance. Similarly, Sussman describes Victorian middle-class manliness as strongly linked to self-discipline and control: ‘No longer is manliness defined as physical prowess, but as control of the interior life, the ability to continue even with the possibility if not the certainty of failure, the self-policing that controls fears arising from within’ (Sussman 1995, 103). Adams, too, highlights the increasing emphasis on the binary between male and female, between active and passive, between masculine self-discipline, aggressive self-mastery, and self-assertion and feminine self-denial (8–9). Similarly, Phillip Mallett writes of this emphasis on selfdiscipline and the ‘learned ability to control potentially disruptive male energies’: Victorian representations of manliness abound in metaphors of iron restraint, patience and reserve, opposed to images of volcanic chaos or excess. The more intense the conflict, the more manly the victory; indeed, the struggle for self-mastery could itself be construed as a sign

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of masculinity, since women, with their supposedly gentler natures, were thought to be exempt from such trials. On this account, Victorian manhood was by definition a state of permanent crisis, a site of anxiety and contradiction as much as a source of power. (Mallett 2015, vii)

Though Victorian masculinity and manliness have become more popular critical topics, one could still concur with Anja Drautzburg’s comment that Victorian studies is often ‘dedicated to the role of women’ or to the homosexuality of the late Victorians—or indeed to artistic manliness, as Sussman and Adams emphasise—rather than the ‘formation of manhood’ in general (Drautzburg 2010, 7). Mallett’s book helps to change this focus; significantly, it includes Chris Louttit’s examination of working-class masculinity in Gaskell, which helps to balance Sussman’s focus primarily on Gaskell’s ‘Captains of Industry’. This book aims to continue this trend, expanding further to consider Gaskell’s representation of masculinity outwith the industrialist context. If the mid-nineteenth century marks a significant moment for changes to masculinity, Gaskell’s novels exemplify these changes. Her works examine a variety of classes and time periods, and, as Alan Shelston notes, ‘in her diversity, both of kind and of quality, few novelists of her generation can be said to have been her equal’ (Shelston 2010, 92). The critical importance of domesticity to masculinity is illustrated in Gaskell’s examination of romantic, companionate ideals. Further, her works explore critical features of Victorian manliness, from masculine self-control to what it means to be a man and a gentleman. While she may be seen as the conventional ‘Mrs Gaskell’, she often travelled independently of her husband, bought a house without his involvement, and remarked that he would not have ‘commanded’ her (Letters , 109); nevertheless, they had a happy marriage, with similar linguistic and cultural interests and a shared Unitarian faith. Though they had shared interests, Gaskell fully understood the gendered implications of her position as a female reader and writer; she remarks, ‘With a struggle and a fight I can see all the Quarterlies 3 months after they are published; till then they lie on the Portico table, for gentlemen to see. I think I will go in for Women’s Rights’ (Letters , 567), and notes, ‘Women, must give up living an artist’s life, if home duties are to be paramount. It is different with men, whose home duties are so small a part of life’ (Letters , 106). Charlotte Brontë could claim, ‘In delineating male character, I labour under disadvantages; intuition and theory will not adequately supply

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the place of observation and experience. When I wrote about women, I am sure of my group—in the other case I am not so sure’ (qtd in Showalter 2014, 109); although likewise barred from the lived experience of masculinity, Gaskell benefited from her experiences as a wife, as well as her observations from activity in professional, religious, and social circles. Though Felicia Bonaparte argues, ‘it is also very likely that Gaskell never quite trusted men. Her father had given her reason not to. Men are inconstant, unreliable. Their love is flimsy as the wind. To love them is to court betrayal’ (Bonaparte 1992, 198), Gaskell’s letters prove otherwise. She writes, ‘I wish I could help taking to men so much more than to women…and I wish I could help men taking to me; I believe we’ve a mutual attraction of which Satan is the originator’ (Letters , 808). Further, she notes, ‘I am surprized [sic] to find how very many people—good kind people—and women infinitely more than men, really & earnestly disapprove of what I have said [in Ruth]…Three or four men have written to approve…grave thoughtful practical men’ (Letters , 226). Though she found William ‘most reserved in expressions of either affection or sympathy’, she notes he felt ‘most kindly towards his children’ (Letters , 46). Throughout her writing, it becomes clear that Gaskell sees both masculinity and femininity as unstable categories restricted by contemporary norms, since she suggests, for example, that women should take an interest in politics (Letters , 148) and that manliness should feature sensitivity and sympathy. Her range of texts highlights that masculinity is a social construct and varies over time, class, and region, and she examines multiple frameworks of masculinity. Gaskell’s variety of work and her engagement with key Victorian issues make her oeuvre ideally suited for an examination of masculinities. Further, her position within Manchester, her Unitarian faith, and her interest in sympathy make her representation of manliness all the more worthy of examination.

Manchester Gaskell’s depiction of masculinity is particularly significant because she witnessed first-hand the effects of the Industrial Revolution in Manchester, the foremost industrial city of the time. This ‘Cottonopolis’ was not only a centre of urbanisation and manufacture, but it was also a cultural, political, and intellectual centre, home to the Manchester School movements for free trade and the Anti-Corn Law League, the Literary and Philosophical Society, and the Mechanics’ Institute. The manufacturer,

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the ‘Manchester Man’, ‘caught contemporary imagination’ (Davidoff 1988, 270), as did the city’s rapid growth and squalour, which Friedrich Engels would so famously depict as dirty, miserable, and inhuman. Engels and Marx collaborated in Manchester, where Engels had worked for his father’s mills and where Engels introduced Marx to Chartist leaders with whom they both published articles in Chartist papers such as the Northern Star. Manchester was a popular focal point due to the speed of its urbanisation and expansion, from a population of 75,000 in 1801 to one of 303,000 in 1851 (Davis 2002, 15); the city was both a statistical and sociological curiosity, as Alexis de Tocqueville points out: ‘From this foul drain the greatest stream of human industry flows out to fertilise the whole world. From this filthy sewer pure gold flows. Here humanity attains its most complete development and its most brutish; here civilization works its miracles, and civilized man is turned back almost into a savage’ (qtd in Davis 2002, 18). This comment exemplifies the conflicted reactions to industrialisation; visitors flocked to Manchester to marvel at its industrial progress and to criticise the decline of humanity in the wretched poverty and pollution. Brought into contact with labourers through her husband’s role as a Unitarian minister, Gaskell was also socially acquainted with Manchester industrialists and was ideally situated to depict working-class masculinity and industrialists alike. Further, she had significant social connections, as shown by her range of correspondence, from Charlotte Brontë and John Ruskin to the Carlyles, Charles Kingsley, and Florence Nightingale. Though Gaskell claimed she was ‘unManchester, and un American’ (Letters , 492), she was involved in its cultural transformations and was clearly interested in the literary representation of industrialism. References in Mary Barton make it clear that she at least occasionally read the Northern Star and would have been familiar with political ideologies of the time, though she claims to ‘know nothing of Political Economy’ (MB, 4). Although archival borrowing records at The Portico Library do not date before 1850, the Gaskells’ borrowing patterns show she read Thomas Carlyle and novels of industrialism by Frances Trollope, Harriet Martineau, and Charles Dickens.2 Gaskell did not just describe her Mancunian surroundings as a casual observer; she saw herself as having ‘appointed work to do’ (Letters , 107) and sought to give voice to the inarticulate workers.

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Unitarianism From Gaskell’s letters, it is clear that she distances herself from orthodoxy, as she notes, ‘I am not (Unitarianly) orthodox!’ and declares, ‘I won’t talk theology—Unitarian or otherwise’ (Letters , 784–785). Though Gaskell’s works do not explicitly mention Unitarianism, her religion played a strong role in her outlook. Raised as a Unitarian and surrounded by Unitarians in Knutsford, she also married a Unitarian minister, William Gaskell, one of the primary Unitarian leaders in Manchester, the centre of Unitarianism in nineteenth-century Britain. William served as Cross Street Chapel’s minister for over fifty years; taught at the principal Unitarian educational institutions and tutored private pupils, including young women, at home (Watts 2013, 208–209); gave lectures to Manchester’s working classes (Webb 1988, 150); gave evening classes at the Mechanics’ Institute; taught literature at the Working Men’s College; and worked with John Relly Beard to found the Unitarian Home Missionary College to train working-class men without academic backgrounds to become preachers for working-class congregations (Watts 2013, 190). Unitarians ranked among the social, intellectual, and cultural elite of Manchester and were involved in many cultural, philanthropic, and educational activities. Through their involvement in the Cross Street and Mosley Street chapels, Elizabeth and William Gaskell knew prominent industrial and commercial families as well as the working class. Elizabeth was related to the Darwins, and her uncle was a physician at Quarry Bank Mill, owned by the Unitarian Greg family. The status of Unitarians in Manchester as the ‘ruling party’ meant that, as Edgar Wright suggests, they were not inclined to radical reforms of society or government (Wright 1965, 27). Though Unitarians were prominent in Manchester, they were often marginalised as ‘religious outsiders’ (Davis 2002, 150), giving them a ‘consciousness of difference’ and ‘a background of social exclusion and political protest which questioned orthodox, “established” belief’ (Foster 2002, 13). The Unitarian faith had important implications for gender, education, and science. The Unitarian focus on the individual search for religious truth held both men and women responsible, and thus Unitarians believed in ‘the cultivation of the intellect regardless of sex’ (Jenkins 1995, 98). Further, they rejected biblical infallibility and their nonfundamentalist, ethical approach to the Bible allowed for support of scientific enquiry, upheld by their belief in a search for truth (Wright

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1965, 42n). William Gaskell believed scientific inquiry might ‘eventually undermin[e] the system of Christianity’ but would reveal the ‘glory of the creator’ (Holstein 1998, 47). Unitarians believed that science would help with the progress of humanity in general, and they saw biological evolution as ‘consistent with God’s plan for human progress’ (Chapple, ‘Unitarian’ 2007, 171). With its openness, lack of articles of faith, and opposition to creeds and mandatory beliefs, Victorian Unitarianism proves difficult to define (cf. Watts 2013, 3–4; Wright 1965, 25; Wheeler 1992, 26). Unitarianism rejected predestination, eternal damnation, original sin, and mystical doctrines (such as the Trinity) and denied Christ’s divinity, instead seeing Jesus as a good example, but there were few other specific principles of Unitarian faith. Victorian Unitarians believed in free will, man’s inherent goodness (Millard 2001, 11), and a merciful God, rejecting the notion of everlasting punishment, putting great emphasis on charitable conduct, and believing the New Testament offered a ‘system of ethics’ for men and women alike for everyday morality (Wheeler 1992, 26). In his sermon, Eternal Salvation Not Dependent on Correctness of Belief (1844), William Gaskell argued that belief in ‘some particular system of doctrines’ leads to ‘arrogance and exclusiveness’ and goes against the idea of a benevolent and compassionate God (Harris 1844, 543). Unitarian optimism translated to their replacing a wrathful God with a merciful, ‘infinitely benevolent’ God (Webb 1988, 144). Further, they replaced a ‘male’ Old Testament ethic of justice with a ‘female’ compassionate ethic of charity (Jenkins 1995, 96). William Gaskell attacked religions based on ‘gloom and terror’ in favour of religion based around ‘light and love…comfort and joy’ (Wright 1965, 26). Though Unitarians did not seek to change the existing economic structure, they sympathised with the poor, believing that benevolence and education would act as solutions; practical in their faith and fundamentally optimistic in their beliefs, they were active in charity (Watts 2013, 104). With an emphasis on practical good works, self-help, and education, Unitarians believed in breaching class barriers to raise the poor from vice and degradation to rational, intellectual, spiritual beings. Unitarians were active in fighting for educational reforms, women’s rights, and anti-slavery campaigns. Further, they took an egalitarian approach to education; since they believed that ‘education not sex…made people what they were’ and that all people are perfectible, women were not

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‘inferior in mental capacity’ (36) and both middle-class and workingclass women should be educated. Unitarians believed that, if educated, a woman’s intellect could equal a man’s (79); because the mind began as a blank slate, all humans could develop morally and mentally. James Relly Beard, an educationist who worked with William Gaskell, noted there were ‘often greater differences between male and male than between male and female’; he maintained that since all ‘had one human nature in common’, all required ‘a common educational discipline’, and he criticised parents who gave daughters an inferior education. He argued, however, that women should not ‘leave their own sphere in a vain attempt to displace men’ (191). Instead, Unitarians believed women should be educated for their personal, moral, and spiritual development and in order to be good mothers, educators for their children, and companions for their husbands. Unitarians’ views on gender were influenced by the fact that they believed that Jesus was human, not divine, and was to be admired, not worshipped. He was a man, not a resurrection, and an example of living honestly and compassionately. Elizabeth Gaskell writes, ‘the one thing I am clear and sure about is this that Jesus Christ was not equal to His father; that, however divine a being he was not God; and that worship as God addressed to Him is therefore wrong in me’ (Letters , 860). Barbara Brill notes that William Gaskell viewed Christ as a ‘true, real and noble man’ who was approved by but not equal to God; the fact that he was a man and could ‘be touched by human frailties’ meant that humanity could take inspiration from the example he set (Brill 1984, 31). This admiration of Jesus as a man meant that, ‘if He had learned to be perfect, so everyone could learn to be perfect’ (Webb 1988, 145). Further, his status as a human meant that ‘a woman, as a human being with endless potential for moral progress, could fully emulate the virtues of the Messiah’ (Styler 2010, 46). Christ was seen as an androgynous figure, combining both masculine and feminine elements, and showed, as Helen Plant argues, that ‘in order to achieve perfect harmony with God, and to realise the potential for perfection demonstrated by Christ, human culture and human beings must also combine masculine and feminine principles’ (Plant 2000, 733). Thus, male and female spheres should not be so separate, masculine and feminine qualities had ‘equal worth’, and masculine and feminine virtues were not necessarily biological or innate but were, instead, abstract and ‘could and should be present in both men and women’ (733). Just as women were seen as capable of being

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educated to have the same knowledge as men, men were seen to have the same capacity for sympathy and tenderness as women and were expected to be attached to their family and domestic life (Watts 2013, 195–196). William Crosskey argued that those who ‘stood in the way of efforts to widen the scope of women’s activity and to restructure gender relations on the basis of equality were doing nothing less than explicitly opposing the progress of God’s kingdom on earth’ (Plant 2000, 734). Likewise, Catherine Osler urged both men and women to develop ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ attributes: ‘It is no more unwomanly for a woman to take part in politics than it is unmanly for a man to nurse a baby. All that is strong and manly we need in the government of a child, and just as much, all that is pure and womanly we need in the government of men’ (734). Ruth Watts writes that the Unitarian ideal of a ‘rational, perpetually self-improving, enquiring, public-spirited individual’ might, in nineteenth-century terms, ‘seem to be a male ideal rather than a female one’, coupled with the fact that ‘Unitarianism stressed the maleness of God and had neither the Virgin Mary nor the “gentle” Jesus [to] pray to’ (Watts 2013, 101). She points out, however, that Unitarians emphasised Jesus’s loving side and ‘used this as a model of men as well as their inspiration for their abiding and active compassion for all kinds and conditions of humans’ (101). The fact that Gaskell does not discuss Unitarianism in her fiction is not altogether surprising for a tolerant, undogmatic religion with no proselytising (Toussaint-Thiriet 2004, 65). As a Unitarian, she felt compelled to pursue the truth despite controversy, even when Unitarian mill owners felt criticised in Mary Barton and members of William Gaskell’s congregation of Cross Street Chapel burned Ruth (1853). Critics have located her Unitarianism in her tolerance, liberalism, and humanitarianism (Webb 1988, 153), her emphasis on education, truth, atonement, feeling, and sympathy (Uglow 1993, 131), her ‘criticism of social evils, compassion for suffering humanity, hard-won trust in divine providence’ (Chapple ‘Unitarian’ 2007, 165), and her trust in sympathy to break down barriers of class and gender to affirm a ‘common humanity’ (Styler 2010, 41). An emphasis on love and forgiveness, rather than punishment, comes through in Gaskell’s writing; in a letter, she writes of God ‘loving me with an individual love tenderer than any mother’s’ (Letters , 327). Gaskell not only emphasises God’s loving nature but also suggests that tender love is not gender-restrictive; as such, her religion appears to play a key role in her views on femininity and masculinity.

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Discourses of Sympathy This Unitarian focus on compassion for others is emphasised through Gaskell’s use of sympathy as a structuring framework and the driving force for many of her novels. In her letters, Gaskell advises an aspiring writer: ‘Besides viewing the subject from a solely artistic point of view a good writer of fiction must have lived an active & sympathetic life if she wishes her books to have strength & vitality in them. When you are forty, and if you have a gift of being an authoress you will write ten times as good a novel as you could do now, just because you will have gone through so much more of the interests of a wife and mother’ (Letters , 695). Though many have—rightly—focused on Gaskell’s conventional status in placing motherhood before a career as an artist, it is equally worth noting her emphasis on sympathy and her link of sympathy to action. One could argue that sympathy was the catalyst for Gaskell’s first novel, Mary Barton, for she makes it clear from the first page that her work revolves around creating sympathy for the traditionally unsympathetic labourers. In contrast to the stereotypically ‘masculine’ focus on rational facts—on statistics and Blue Books—as a means to understand workingclass life, Gaskell uses the ‘feminine’ voice of emotion—of sympathy and nurturance—to render the working class comprehensible to her readers and to bridge the alienating divide between the classes. Rather than stress the necessity of radical change to society, Gaskell emphasises the need for sympathy and the harnessing of emotion to assuage social problems. The process of reading the novel was meant to create sympathy in her readership; at the same time, Gaskell depicts characters of different classes and backgrounds who, throughout the course of the novel, would learn to sympathise with one another. This double-layered sympathy—within and outwith the text—could, as Carolyn Betensky argues, be ‘taken for granted as a palliative’ (Betensky 2010, 95). While ‘empathy’ only came into common usage in the twentieth century, the usage of ‘sympathy’ dates back much further; though often used in a physiological sense to describe a ‘sympathetic’ relation between body parts, ‘sympathy’ was used to signify ‘fellow feeling’ as early as the seventeenth century (OED). Adam Smith, in Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), established the workings of sympathy as a feeling of identification with others’ emotions, of ‘conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation’ (Smith 1761, 3). For Smith, this identification process is eminently bodily: ‘It is the impressions of our own senses

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only, not those of his, which our imaginations copy. By the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body…’ (4). Although there is a type of corporeal imagining, it is the feelings of the spectator him/herself and not those of the object of sympathy that come into play: ‘The compassion of the spectator must arise altogether from the consideration of what he himself would feel if he was reduced to the same unhappy situation, and, what perhaps is impossible, was at the same time able to regard it with his present reason and judgment’ (8). Smith makes it clear that the spectator can feel anguish for a madman yet the insane person is ‘altogether insensible to his own misery’ (8). Smith’s explanation suggests that the process of sympathising is a productive one, creating compassion, and that it functions regardless of whether the feelings created in the spectator match those of the object of sympathy, thereby implying that it is almost the duty of those who have ‘reason and judgment’ to feel and act on the behalf of those they see; in Gaskell’s case, her middle-class readership are called upon to feel for her characters, from the working-class poor to unwed mothers. Amit Rai, in working through the complexities of sympathy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, characterises sympathy as ‘haunted by the call to suffer for or with another’ (Rai 2002, 16) and as necessarily forward-looking, as a spectator anticipating that he/she may suffer similarly in the future. Audrey Jaffe defines sympathy—within Victorian fiction and critical studies—as ‘commonly…used to describe an individualistic, affective solution to the problem of class alienation: the attempt to ameliorate social differences with assurances of mutual feeling and universal humanity’ (Jaffe 2000, 15). Although ‘individualistic’, it is this larger whole that Rai emphasises, for he argues that sympathy is not only future-oriented action but is also socially productive and collective, ‘not simply individualizing’ (Rai 2002, 37). Moreover, Rai examines the fact that the act of identifying with someone through the process of sympathising with them is paradoxical, for ‘sympathy produces the very inequalities it decries and seeks to bridge’ (xviii). Sympathy, he explains, would be impossible were there not differences of power, yet these inequalities (be they related to race, gender, or class) are what ‘must be bridged through identification’ (xviii–xix). Although paradoxical, however, Rai convincingly argues that sympathy ‘transformed the ways in which people came to think of how best to manage, order, and govern individuals and populations in the late eighteenth century’ (xix),

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and from that point onward, political, economic, and social reforms and movements were ‘dominated’ by sympathy (xix). Gaskell’s turn to sympathy is thus not an isolated case but rather fits into a larger contemporary and national move, particularly with regard to the working class. By looking at sympathy as a means of cohesion, however, Rai is careful to note the distinction between ‘solidarity’ and ‘sympathy’; the former, linked to labour struggles, is seen as ‘firm, concentrated, unforgiving, relentless, courageous, and, as it were, “hard”’ (Rai 2002, xiii), in contrast to sympathy that is ‘“soft,” stupidly charitable, full of “good intentions,” and just, well, too diffuse’ (xiii). Rai remarks that there is considerable overlap and confusion of the two words in everyday usage and points out that ‘solidarity’ came into usage in 1841 through Chartist and trade union discourses and was linked to French Revolution’s rhetoric of ‘fraternity’; ‘solidarity’ was used to denote political and social commonalities and communities, as well as a means of ‘rational mobilization’ that ‘enabled the organization of sociality through the criterion of similarities of social and professional conditions (e.g., trade unionism)’ (192). If this ‘hard’ solidarity can thus be associated with the working-class movements and mobs, then the ‘soft’ sympathy, according to this distinction, is a charitable indulgence, a vice by some definitions: ‘At our most sardonic, we can have sympathy for the devil, but only solidarity links us to the “struggling masses”’ (xiii). Yet this distinction appears all too simplistic when applied to Gaskell’s works, for she looks to sympathy, not solidarity, as the means by which the working classes are united and spurred to action through deep fellow feeling, not just similar social conditions. By the same token, sympathy could also mobilise the middle class into feeling for the working class and prompting individual changes in a way that would be impossible through solidarity and its requisite similarity of conditions. Furthermore, the fact that Gaskell also describes sympathy as a connecting force of the labourers—who are equals—destabilises Rai’s earlier claim that sympathy is necessarily paradoxical due to an imbalance of power, that ‘agent’ and ‘object’ of sympathy are of different levels of power and privilege that seek to be bridged and that ‘[p]roperly performed and executed, sympathy should obliterate its own conditions of existence’ (57). This notion of privilege is likewise explored by Rae Greiner, who writes that ‘sympathetic identification affords a privileged, because ethical, form of knowledge’ (Greiner 2009, 293).

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Although Gaskell presents a working-class sympathy that contrasts with some of Rai’s arguments, his point about privilege does hold more weight for the sympathy garnered in the middle-class readers for the workingclass objects. As Carolyn Betensky explains, ‘Social-problem novels are premised on the exchangeability of positions and of the knowingness and feeling that allow one to occupy them. If conflicts are to be resolved effectively through knowing and feeling, it is because the knowing and the feeling can be accomplished from positions of privilege as if those in the positions of privilege were instead in the other’s shabby shoes’ (Betensky 2010, 12). In order to examine these nuances of power and privilege, Audrey Jaffe in Scenes of Sympathy (2000) looks to capitalism and its relationship to sympathy and spectatorship. In doing so, she establishes that ‘under capitalism, economic relations structure social relations’ (Jaffe 2000, 1) and that capitalist economics causes a feeling of panic and contagion in spectators looking at scenes of poverty, particularly of beggars. Vision is key to sympathy: seeing relates to knowing and identifying with someone, and a shared vision, as Smith points out, can lead to shared feeling. For Jaffe, ‘the act of looking fills the spectator with the anxiety of bodily contagion’ (5) because, as she explains, ‘spectatorship is inseparable from self-reflection’ (3) and as the spectator replaces the sufferer with an image of him/herself in a ‘calloused’ and ‘grimy’ body, he/she inevitably feels the ‘sight of a sufferer…as physically invasive or contagious’ (6). This substitution of the image of the self for the image of the sufferer is, precisely, a sympathetic exchange, and, Jaffe continues, ‘The threat encoded in the sympathetic exchange is that on which a capitalist economy relies: the possibility that the spectator “at ease” and the beggar might indeed, someday, change places’ (7). Jaffe characterises the middle-class self, aspiring to rise and ‘haunted by the specter of economic and social failure’ (9), as being that which is repeatedly called upon to participate in this exchange, and she compellingly argues: [S]ympathy in Victorian fiction is inseparable from issues of visuality and representation because it is inextricable from the middle-class subject’s status as spectator and from the social figures to whose visible presence the Victorian middle class felt it necessary to formulate a response. Victorian representations of sympathy are, as sympathy was for Smith, specular, crucially involving the way capitalist social relations transform subjects into spectators of and objects for one another; they are also spectacular,

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their representational dimension reinforced by the spectatorial character of Victorian culture. (8)

The implications in these ‘scenes of sympathy’ both of visuality and spectatorship and of economics are key to understanding Gaskell’s use of sympathy, as well as the haunting spectre of the working class. As Jaffe explains, the middle-class subject needs lower-class figures in order to identify and recognise themselves as something more respectable, yet at the same time, they figure as a ‘social shadow’, as ‘an image that simultaneously invites identification (since a plea for sympathy is itself a claim for identification, a claim for a common humanity) and requires disidentification’ and distancing (12). Gaskell invests in sympathy for its affective powers and its potential for positive, productive feeling and the chance to bridge social divides through shared feeling. She strives to create sympathy for a range of characters, from the working class to landed nobility and for men and women alike, and sees sympathy as a solution to social problems and class conflict. A project of sympathy is ideally suited to the form of the novel, for sympathy is not just pity or compassion for another but, as Rachel Ablow defines it, is the ‘experience of entering imaginatively into another’s thoughts or feelings’ (Ablow 2007, 8). Gaskell looks to her novels as a means of creating knowledge and feeling which are valuable ends in and of themselves, thereby confirming Betensky’s argument that ‘[t]he social-problem novel effectively pitches its own reading not as a proxy for or call to social action, but as a social act in itself’ (Betensky 2010, 10). Betensky notes, ‘With the development and management of bourgeois feelings through reading serving as the central drama and pivot on both planes of its narrative (the narrative itself and the narrative of the effects of reading on the reader), the social-problem novel ultimately teaches that reading and knowing and feeling are in themselves socially valuable’ (10). The emphasis on sympathy is not, therefore, unique to Gaskell. George Eliot, in ‘Natural History of German Life’ (1856), writes: The greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies. Appeals founded on generalizations and statistics require a sympathy ready-made, a moral sentiment already in activity; but a picture of human life such as a great artist can give, surprises even the trivial and the selfish into that attention to what is apart

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from themselves, which may be called the raw material of moral sentiment… Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot…Art has ever made to the awakening of social sympathies. (Eliot 1963, 270–271)

Whereas Elaine Showalter argues that Victorians saw sympathy in a gendered light, with the ‘feminine imperative of loving sympathy’ (Showalter 2014, 53), Eliot makes it clear the sympathy need not be gendered but rather is available to all artists. Shelley Trower remarks that, within her fiction, Eliot ‘presents masculinity and femininity as unstable categories, and puts forward a model of preferable manhood that incorporates qualities such as sensitivity and sympathy (though within certain limits), qualities conventionally ascribed to femininity’ (Trower 2015, 69). Though not as socially radical as Eliot, Gaskell’s shared emphasis on men and women both feeling sympathy could be considered radical; Ruth Jenkins notes, ‘the radicalism of Gaskell’s social agenda is underscored when one recognises that those values of empathy and compassion, traditionally associated with women and the domestic sphere, are put forth as the ethical values through which all humanity should interact in both public and private spheres—men and women alike’ (Jenkins 1995, 97). In other words, Gaskell not only sought to create sympathy for men and women alike, but she also wanted both men and women to be sympathetic.

Structure Though Gaskell’s short fiction and non-fiction offer a wealth of interesting representations of masculinity, for reasons of space, this book focuses on her full-length fiction. The experimental and exploratory nature of the genre of short stories allowed Gaskell the freedom to explore masculinity in ways that would be impossible in realist novels and to reveal her anxieties about masculine violence not only in working-class males but also in upper-class males. Supernatural and historical tales gave her an outlet to look at earlier and gothic versions of masculinity, and their absence in no way marks their insignificance. Likewise, Cranford (1853) offers a means of exploring masculinity largely through its absence in a town of spinsters; Cranford appears more as a series of vignettes than a short novel and, as such, was set aside with Gaskell’s shorter fiction.

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Furthermore, though The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) is undoubtedly significant as ‘the first full-length biography of a female novelist…by a sister novelist’ (Jay 1998, x), it is equally significant as an examination of how Gaskell’s underlying assumptions about manliness affect her interpretation and presentation of real-life events; in seeking to transform the narrative of Charlotte Brontë’s femininity, Gaskell restructures the narrative of masculinity in Charlotte’s life. Since a thorough examination of Gaskell’s representation of masculinity and manliness in all her novels, short stories, and non-fiction is outside the scope of this project, this book focuses on Gaskell’s longer fiction. This book is presented in three sections, each consisting of two chapters. The first section examines Mary Barton and North and South and Gaskell’s representation of industrial manhood with regard to workingclass masculinity and industrialists alike. In analysing her conflicted view of the working-class man—as simultaneously hyper-masculine, violent, and terrifying as well as emasculated, maternal, and tender—this section also examines new categories and definitions of the ‘gentleman’. The second section looks at Ruth and Cousin Phillis in a framework of intertextuality, exploring existing conceptions of masculinity to which Gaskell was reacting and examining how she takes her contemporaries’ treatments of masculinity and adopts, adapts, changes, and challenges them to her own ends. The third section addresses Gaskell’s depiction of generational change in Sylvia’s Lovers and Wives and Daughters to explore contrasting masculinities, through opposite fathers, sons, brothers, and suitors, to consider aspects of historic manliness. Together, these sections reveal that Gaskell views masculinity not as monolithic but rather as relational and shaped by many contexts; though each chapter analyses Gaskell’s texts separately and focuses on different contexts in each chapter, this book shows that each context—Unitarianism, sympathy, regional identity, historic change, intertextuality— informs many of Gaskell’s works and their representation of masculinity. In doing so, it argues that, as Gaskell defies being confined to one ‘me’ and her works defy simple categorisation as industrialist, domestic, gothic, or historical tales, she likewise defies an essentialist approach to masculinity. In using a variety of discourses and approaches to explore manliness over time, genre, region, and class, Gaskell makes it clear that gender is culturally constructed and dependent on many contexts. Further, in examining her longer fiction in juxtaposition, this book argues that, just as Gaskell views masculinity as a category that cannot be neatly

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contained, she systematically excludes male characters from her resolutions, struggling to contain her models of masculinity within the form of the novel.

Notes 1. Critical attention to Gaskell’s depiction of women is exemplified by titles ranging from Female Friendships and Communities: Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell (Pauline Nestor, 1985); Reader, I Married Him: A Study of the Women Characters of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot (Patricia Beer, 1974); Women’s Voices in the Fiction of Elizabeth Gaskell (Marianne Camus, 2002); Some Appointed Work to Do: Women and Vocation in the Fiction of Elizabeth Gaskell (Robin Colby, 1995); The Woman Question in Mrs Gaskell’s Life and Works (Aine Rubenius, 1973). Similarly, shorter critical works also veer towards the woman question, with ‘From Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton to her North and South: Progress or Decline for Women?’ (Pearl Brown, 2000) and ‘In Promiscuous Company: Female Public Appearance in Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South’ (Barbara Leah Harman, 1988). 2. The author’s doctoral thesis (published under her maiden name, Healy) contains an Appendix that consists of a list, based on archival research, of the books and journals that William—and occasionally Elizabeth—Gaskell borrowed from Manchester’s Portico Library between 1850 and 1865. Gaskell’s husband served as Chairman of the Portico from 1849 to 1884, and though women were not allowed to be library members, it is clear that many of William’s borrowings were for his wife. Though Portico archives of the Issue Books only date back to 1850, this list makes it possible to trace much of Gaskell’s reading history, from novels and periodicals to travel diaries and biographies, throughout most of her writing career.

CHAPTER 2

Working-Class Masculinity in Mary Barton

In Mary Barton (1848), Elizabeth Gaskell seeks to reveal the sorrows and hardships of working-class Manchester labourers, to examine the divide between the rich and the poor, and to urge her readers to sympathise with the working class. In particular, she declares sympathy for John Barton. Her project of sympathy is complex, linked both to compassion and to mutual understanding; it is problematic, however, for though she presents sympathetic working-class men, she fails to find a resolution for them within England. The principal models of working-class manhood are expelled from the space of the text and from Manchester itself, banished to death or to Canada. Though Gaskell presents a sympathetic exchange between an individual labourer and factory owner by the novel’s conclusion, it is too late; she is unable to envision a means of effective connection between the working class and industrialists without resorting to death or relocation. Gaskell’s conflicted portrait of workingclass masculinity in Mary Barton—her simultaneous appeal to readers to share in her ‘deep sympathy with the care-worn men’ (MB, 3) and her hints at fears of working-class men whose hands are ‘clenched and ready to smite’ (4)—helps to explain why she fails to find a resolution and leaves her text haunted by John Barton.

© The Author(s) 2020 M. Lowe, Masculinity in the Work of Elizabeth Gaskell, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48397-5_2

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Gaskell’s Goal of Sympathy Sympathy—both within and outwith the text, among characters in the novel and among her readers themselves—is a key aspect of Gaskell’s depiction of masculinity. Though her project of sympathy for workingclass masculinity is ultimately conflicted and at times frustratingly ambivalent, she nevertheless makes it clear from the beginning that she invests in the power of sympathy. In the preface of Mary Barton, she draws attention to her goal of harnessing sympathy: …I bethought me how deep might be the romance in the lives of some of those who elbowed me daily in the busy streets of the town in which I resided. I had always felt a deep sympathy with the careworn men, who looked as if doomed to struggle through their lives in strange alternations between work and want; tossed to and fro by circumstances, apparently in even a greater degree than other men. A little manifestation of this sympathy, and a little attention to the expression of feelings on the part of some of the work-people with whom I was acquainted, had laid open to me the hearts of one or two of the more thoughtful among them…The more I reflected on the unhappy state of things between those so bound to each other by common interests, as the employers and the employed must ever be, the more anxious I became to give some utterance to the agony which from time to time convulses this dumb people; the agony of suffering without the sympathy of the happy, or of erroneously believing that such is the case. (MB, 3)

This preface echoes Friedrich Engels’s The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), which details the very problem that so upset Gaskell: a complete lack of sympathy between people so close in proximity to one another. Engels writes of the ‘repulsive’ ‘turmoil of the streets’, with ‘all classes and ranks crowding past each other…as though they had nothing in common, nothing to do with one another’; further, ‘it occurs to no man to honour another with so much as a glance. The brutal indifference, the unfeeling isolation of each in his private interest becomes the more repellent and offensive, the more these individuals are crowded together, within a limited space’ (Engels 2009, 37). This complete indifference and egotistical isolation necessitates Gaskell’s literary intervention, with the goal of creating fellow feeling between members of different classes living close together. Whereas Engels looks at this lack of sympathy, this complete divide, as cause for radical change, Gaskell looks to sympathy

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as the means to solve the growing social and national divide. Rather than seeing class relations as necessarily hostile, Gaskell maintains that the classes could and should work together for mutual benefits and that, from their common interests, sympathy could be had between the two classes. Further, she maintains that the existing system works for their mutual benefit, if only they could be brought to see it. Engels believes that the rich have no sympathy for the poor; Gaskell, in contrast, believes the poor ‘erroneously believe’ they lack the sympathy of the rich. Her work aligns with Thomas Carlyle’s in this shared belief in sympathetic understanding, and she echoes not only his project but also his language of ‘dumb’-ness; he declares the need for ‘genuine understanding by the upper classes of society what it is that the under classes intrinsically mean; a clear interpretation of the thought which at heart torments these wild inarticulate souls, struggling there, with inarticulate uproar, like dumb creatures in pain, unable to speak what is in them!’ (Carlyle 1840, 6).1 Further, Carlyle notes, ‘What are all popular commotions and maddest bellowings, from Peterloo to the Place-de-Grève itself? Bellowings, inarticulate cries as of a dumb creature in rage and pain; to their ear of wisdom they are inarticulate prayers: “Guide me, govern me! I am mad and miserable, and cannot guide myself!”’ (52). The working class is unable to communicate coherently or be considered as humans instead of creatures; they are mad, which could imply fury or insanity, and they are alienated from themselves by their loss of reason and from society by their inability to be articulate. This double alienation is that which Gaskell seeks to cure; her prescription is to explain the working class articulately to her middle-class readership, to persuade the working class that the middle classes are not wilfully at fault, and, in doing so, to bridge the divide between the classes. Gaskell emphasises the need for sympathy and the harnessing of emotion to assuage social problems. Shirley Foster argues that Gaskell’s message ‘is subversive, too, in that it challenges the male hegemony of rationality and theory and seeks to empower the feminine (empathy, emotional understanding, nurturing)’ (Foster 2002, 38). In contrast to the stereotypically ‘masculine’ focus on rational facts as a means of understanding workingclass life, Gaskell uses the ‘feminine’ voice of emotions to render the working class comprehensible to her readers and to bridge the alienating divide between the classes. To this end, Gaskell looks to her novels as a means of creating knowledge and feeling which are valuable ends in and of themselves, thereby confirming Carolyn Betensky’s argument that

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reading a social-problem novel is a social act in itself. As such, sympathy may substitute for action. A contemporary reviewer, John Forster, notes that Gaskell offers no solution except advocating ‘wholesome sympathy’, perhaps ‘not unreasonably or unwisely’, for readers will doubtless gain a ‘thoughtful sense of what is due to the poor’ (Forster 2008, 367). In other words, rather than calling for political representation of the working class or for reforms and laws, Gaskell calls for literary representation, of guiding the feeling and knowledge of the middle class and marshalling sympathy as a means to improve social relations and provoke individual sympathetic exchanges. As such, sympathy is not just a means to an end but is itself a productive act. Gaskell promotes understanding of the working classes, in part, due to their proximity, the fact that they ‘elbow her daily’ in the streets yet know nothing of one another. John Stuart Mill’s claim—that ‘the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other’s heels’ is not the ‘ideal of life’ but rather a ‘disagreeable’ but ‘necessary stage in the progress of civilisation’ (Mill 2004, 690)—echoes in Gaskell, for it is not the elbowing she opposes.2 The structure of industrial urban space—with classes literally elbowing each other in the streets—may be necessary, but the lack of sympathy is not.3 In rendering comprehensible and demystifying those with whom her readers daily come into visual and physical contact, Gaskell highlights the significance of the closeness created by industrial urban space throughout her work. For example, she writes: It is a pretty sight to walk through a street with lighted shops; the gas is so brilliant, the display of goods so much more vividly shown than by day, and of all shops a druggist’s looks the most like the tales of our childhood, from Aladdin’s garden of enchanted fruits to the charming Rosamond with her purple jar. No such associations had Barton; yet he felt the contrast between the well-filled, well-lighted shops and the dim gloomy cellar, and it made him moody that such contrasts should exist. They are the mysterious problem of life to more than him. He wondered if any in all the hurrying crowd had come from such a house of mourning. He thought they all looked joyous, and he was angry with them. But he could not, you cannot, read the lot of those who daily pass you by in the street. How do you know the wild romances of their lives; the trials, the temptations they are even now enduring, resisting, sinking under? You may be elbowed one instant by the girl desperate in her abandonment, laughing in mad merriment with her outward gesture, while her soul is longing for the rest of the dead, and bringing itself to think of the cold flowing river as the only

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mercy of God remaining to her here. You may pass the criminal, meditating crimes at which you will to-morrow shudder with horror as you read them. (MB, 61)

This passage serves to highlight the disparity between the two classes and the conflicted proximity of these otherwise distant people. This paradox of close distance is distinctly urban, capitalistic, and consumerist: it emanates from the gas of the lighted shops and the display of goods. As Dennis Denisoff points out, ‘the charming Rosamond’ is an allusion to Maria Edgeworth’s tale, ‘The Purple Jar’, which focuses on consumerism and its effect on children (Denisoff 2008, 11–12). Equally significant is the fact that this consumerism is exoticised, making druggist shops reminiscent of the enchanted Orient of Aladdin. The allusions to Rosamond and Aladdin are both distinctly literary; Gaskell includes her middle-class readership in these associations—they are ‘the tales of our childhood’—and is conscious of the fact that these elements are lost on workers such as John Barton; though Barton sees the shops as spectacle, he is an alien in the street, not a consumer. In lieu of alluring, exotic displays, Barton sees the contrast between the bright shops that invite the gaze and ‘the dim gloomy cellar’, a negative space that seemingly disappears from view. Gaskell’s switch between points of view—‘It is a pretty sight’ to ‘He felt’ and ‘He wondered’ to ‘You may’—stresses, on a linguistic level, the current dis connection as well as the connections she seeks to draw between her middle-class readership and individual labourers. Her changes in pronoun usage serve to invoke the readers not in a shared vision of the world (our childhood) but, with the repetitive and ambiguous you, in a way that involves the readers as a group and as individuals. Neither the readers nor John Barton can ‘read the lot of those who daily pass’; text, body, and lived experience intertwine in the act of reading. With Gaskell’s mentions of Rosamond and Aladdin, she brings in literary references to an intensely visually orientated scene to highlight the importance of reading and to suggest another type of reading: one can read a text as a means to understand an issue or a group of people and one can also read people by reacting to the visual scene and engaging in a sympathetic exchange. Whereas a middle-class spectator would read the texts of Rosamond and Aladdin and read the scene of the druggist’s store window in a positive, productive manner, opening and creating spaces of imagination, the working class does not have access to the literary texts and can only look at the shop windows and think of their own misery.

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John Barton, in trying to ‘read’ the scene, sees an emblem of social exclusion. This visual reading is both limited and limiting, for it is impossible to read the passing people, to see the souls of criminals and the dying. In the preface and in this passage, Gaskell emphasises not only visuality but also physicality: these people—those who endure, resist, and sink— are elbowing her and her readers, who push past in mutually aggressive physical contact. This image, of two classes literally pushing against each other but failing to read each other, brings into question Engels’s description of Manchester: ‘I have never seen so systematic a shutting out of the working class from the thoroughfares, so tender a concealment of everything which might affront the eye and the nerves of the bourgeoisie, as in Manchester’ (Engels 2009, 59). Urban construction may have created a barrier between the classes, but Gaskell suggests that the barrier of concealment is not, in fact, due to physical space; rather, the class division is all the more ‘mysterious’ because the contact is so physical and yet completely lacking in any deep human connection or understanding. Gaskell seeks to remedy this problem, both by appealing directly to her readers to recognise themselves in this scene and by focusing on individual labourers, such as John Barton, to create sympathy; in other words, since the city makes such identification and individualisation impossible, a literary intervention is vital. Although her novel oscillates between narratives of individual characters and larger statements about society, she stresses the fact that it is the individual that matters—‘So much for generalities. Let us now return to individuals’ (MB, 168)—for at the individual level, connections and conversations can be made. That said, she complicates her own project, for her passage carries reminders that the crowd may include criminals and prostitutes, for whom the ‘pretty sight’ evokes illicit opportunities of gain. The individual John Barton serves as one of Gaskell’s primary mouthpieces in the novel; at the beginning, he declares: Don’t think to come over me with th’ old tale, that the rich know nothing of the trials of the poor; I say, if they don’t know, they ought to know. We’re their slaves as long as we can work; we pile up their fortunes with the sweat of our brows, and yet we are to live as separate as if we were in two worlds; ay, as separate as Dives and Lazarus, with a great gulf betwixt us: but I know who was best off then. (MB, 11)

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Here, Gaskell’s language explicitly mirrors that found in Benjamin Disraeli’s Sybil , or Two Nations (1845) of the ‘gulf atween’ the miners and ‘mainmasters’ (Disraeli 2008, 144) and ‘the impassable gulf’ between two nations, ‘the Privileged and the People’ (245). John Barton notes this division between the rich and poor, for he attributes the distinction to wealth and to labour—the rich have the fortunes and the poor have the sweat. Gaskell’s project is to bridge the gap between these ‘two worlds’, for her word choice makes it clear that the rich ought to be informed. Both Disraeli and Gaskell, however, have difficulty finding a resolution for this division. Disraeli’s ‘plot does not unite the “Two Nations”’, particularly since Sybil marries a disguised aristocrat and it ‘is difficult to see how the union of Church, Throne, and People was to counteract the destitution described in the novel’ (Smith 2008, xvi). Moreover, Gaskell in Mary Barton leaves the reader with no real solution: characters of both classes are either killed or banished overseas. Though Gaskell illustrates how readers could imaginatively engage with the working class, the place for this sympathy within industrial Manchester is not altogether clear.

A Conflicted Title Gaskell makes it clear from the first page of Mary Barton that her work revolves around creating sympathy for ‘careworn men’ (MB, 3). Although her language eventually shifts to ungendered terms of ‘workpeople’ and ‘this dumb people’ (3), this early emphasis on men coincides with her initial plan to name her novel after John Barton rather than Mary. Gaskell blames her publisher for forcing her to change the title. Alan Shelston argues that Chapman realised ‘Barton’s ultimate exclusion from the story’ and the fact that ‘the narrative increasingly comes to revolve around Mary’ (Shelston 2013, 6). Nevertheless, Gaskell maintains, even after publication, that Mary was not the central figure. In an 1849 letter, Gaskell writes: ‘John Barton’ was the original name, as being the central figure to my mind; indeed I had so long felt that the bewildered life of an ignorant thoughtful man of strong power of sympathy, dwelling in a town so full of striking contrasts as this is, was a tragic poem, that in writing he was my ‘hero’; and it was a London thought coming through the publisher that it must be called Mary B. (Letters , 70)

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Further, she notes that ‘no one seems to see my idea of a tragic poem’ (Letters , 68). In Gaskell’s mind at least, it would appear that the focus of the novel is on working-class masculinity in the shape of John Barton; although the publisher is to blame for the change of title, he cannot be held solely responsible for the novelistic shift into the domestic. It seems that Gaskell, although striving to focus her work on John Barton, could not find a satisfactory means to resolve the contradictions he represented and thus changed her focus to a narrative she could resolve: the union of Jem and Mary through marriage, which takes Mary out of the factory and into the home and takes the couple out of the divided nation and into Canada. Despite this shift in focus, Gaskell maintains that John was not only the focus of her ‘tragic poem’ but also the centre of her sympathy: ‘John Barton’ was the original title of the book. Round the character of John Barton all the others formed themselves; he was my hero, the person with whom all my sympathies went, with whom I tried to identify myself at the time, because I believed from personal experience that such men were not uncommon, and would well reward such sympathy and love as should throw light down upon their groping search after the causes of suffering, and the reason why suffering is sent, and what they can do to lighten it. (Letters , 74)

Her project of sympathy radiates out from the character of John, and her letters make it clear that she aligns sympathy not with passive pity but with identification and the goal of alleviating pain. That said, Gaskell’s simultaneous deep feeling and seeming ambivalence about where to direct her sympathy—and that of her readers—are in conflict throughout the novel.

A Conflicted Sympathy The fact that John Barton murders Harry Carson problematises Gaskell’s goal of creating sympathy for the working-class man. One issue, as Raymond Williams points out, is that the novel largely focuses on the representative and the murder is unrepresentative (Williams 1967, 90). Though by no means common, the murder is not unimaginable; while Gaskell did not intend a particular likeness, she is ‘distressed’ to hear of a similarity between Barton’s murder and a Hyde mill owner’s murder (Foster 2002, 35).

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Although John Lucas agrees with Williams about the unrepresentative nature of the murder, he disagrees with Williams’s focus on the fear of violence. He writes that novels such as Sybil and Alton Locke illustrate a prevalent fear of violence but that this fear is not the main cause for the violence in Mary Barton: It seems to me that she finds the murder necessary, because by means of it she can simplify a complexity which has become too terrific for her to accept consciously. Her mind shuts out the awareness of a muddle so colossal that it defeats the explanations of her social creeds, and so she attempts to impose order by turning to murder, where a neat pattern can realise itself: class antagonism producing a violence from which springs reconciliation. (Lucas 2008, 503)

In other words, the murder is not the reason for which attention is shifted from John Barton but rather a means of ‘disposing of Barton’, a ‘tremendous relief…a way out of her problem with Barton, his so awkwardly leading her to the exposure of false hopes she dare not abandon’ (503). Taken a step further, one could argue that the murder covers up the fact that she does not know how to resolve the complexities of the workingclass man she represents. As Lucas declares, ‘As soon as Barton commits murder he becomes at best an object of pity’ (503); he can be pitied, incarcerated, and/or killed off, but he can no longer function in society. Whereas with Higgins in North and South (1854), Gaskell finds a way to portray a worker who sees the flaws in the industrial system and helps to improve them, in Mary Barton she has not yet found a way to incorporate the working-class man into the public sphere. Shirley Foster highlights this difference: ‘Not only does Higgins separate himself from such violence, but his ability to debate the issues cogently and sensibly (and Gaskell knew working men quite as intelligent and articulate as he) is an advance on the depiction of the passionate anger of “this dumb people”…in her earlier industrial novel’ (Foster 2002, 108). It is undeniable that the murder makes Gaskell’s project of sympathy more difficult; the project, however, was difficult to begin with. Although a project of education, communication, and sympathy does not appear particularly radical, Gaskell reveals anxieties about focusing entirely on the problematic figure of John Barton. Jenny Uglow writes that ‘Chapman (or Forster) may have been reluctant to shock the public by having the name of a murderer, John Barton, as the title’ (Uglow 1993, 186).

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Raymond Williams likewise argues that it is the murder which necessitates the change of focus; ‘even allowing for the publishers’ influence’, he argues, Barton’s act of murder ‘seems to put himself not only beyond the range of Mrs Gaskell’s sympathy (which is understandable), but, more essentially, beyond the range of her powers’ (Williams 1967, 89–90). This emphasis on the murder is compelling. Overall, however, one could argue that this anxiety springs more from the fact that he is a male labourer than that he is a murderous figure. As will be discussed, Gaskell presents the labouring male as a contradiction—he is both nurturing and violent, both a monster and a skeleton—and it is seemingly impossible to pinpoint what the working-class male represents, as well as what sympathising with him would mean: is it sympathy for a downtrodden, tender man or is it sympathy for a volatile murderer?

A Conflicted Subject---Working-Class Masculinity in the Domestic Sphere: Nurturing, Tender, and Emotional For Gaskell, working-class males seem to represent a multitude of contradictions to contemporary gender norms. Jem Wilson, the rival for the eponymous heroine’s affections, is a complicated embodiment of working-class masculinity, encompassing stereotypical Victorian feminine and masculine traits. When he tells Mary of his love, ‘his sturdy frame shook with his strong agony. The two women were frightened, as women always are, on witnessing a man’s overpowering grief…He could not contain himself. He took her hand in his firm yet trembling grasp’ (MB, 76–77). He is shaking and trembling in agony; his overpowering grief does not, however, emasculate him: he is sturdy, strong, and firm. Gaskell highlights that the working-class male is not only more emotionally vulnerable and thus feminised but also physically strong. If, perhaps, the working-class male was completely ‘feminised’ to stereotypical middleclass notions of gender in the sense of being emptied out of physical strength and being more emotional, he would not be as unsettling as the paradoxical figure he appears, with this capacity for emotional volatility and strength. On the other hand, one could argue that the labourer’s tenderness makes him less threatening. Though the working-class male fulfils some of the traditional ‘female’ roles such as caring for children and the working-class female labours outside the home, that is not to

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say that the female labourer is completely stereotypically ‘masculinised’; the ‘separate spheres’ convention and the corresponding received ideas of masculine and feminine are impossible to sustain in the daily life of the working class. This concern about the domestic repercussions when a mother works and a father assumes domestic responsibilities was also addressed by Engels, who cites the case of a Lancashire labourer. This labourer explains that although women and children can find work, there is no work to be found for men: ‘now the world is upside down. Mary has to work and I have to stop at home, mind the childer, sweep and wash, bake and mend’ (Engels 2009, 155). Engels is explicit in detailing his reaction to such a situation: And yet this condition, which unsexes the man and takes from the woman all womanliness without being able to bestow upon the man true womanliness, or the woman true manliness—this condition which degrades, in the most shameful way, both sexes, and through them, Humanity, is the last result of our much-praised civilisation… (155)

This passage could just as easily be describing Jem, who is unsexed without having ‘true womanliness’; Engels does not stop, however, by denouncing this position as shameful but rather goes on to critique gender roles as the bourgeoisie traditionally conceives them: ‘we must admit that so total a reversal of the position of the sexes can have come to pass only because the sexes have been placed in a false position from the beginning. If the reign of the wife over the husband, as inevitably brought about by the factory system, is inhuman, the pristine rule of the husband over the wife must have been inhuman too’ (156). In other words, Engels uses his examination of semi-reversed gender roles to show the falsity in bourgeois family gender roles and to prove that this family structure is an institution in the service of capital and ‘private interest’. Engels notes that there is ‘an inevitable crisis’ as ‘the family is being dissolved by the labour of wife and children, or inverted by the husband’s being thrown out of employment and made dependent upon them for bread’ (216). This fear, this threat of an impending societal doom, was undoubtedly familiar to Gaskell, who appears equally concerned about working-class masculinity. Whereas Engels is largely preoccupied with men’s roles—as labourer or as homemaker—Gaskell stages the as revolving around working-class men’s emotions. Engels looks at the separation of tasks and imbalance of power

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to argue that received gender roles are mistaken; in contrast, Gaskell does not seek to alter the social and gender structures of her society. Rather, she argues that the ‘feminine’ side that working-class life fosters in its males is both nurturing and emotionally unstable and thus potentially violent; in effect, in 1840s Manchester, it is not possible for a working man to integrate strength and ‘feminine’ qualities, for he becomes ‘volatile’. Simultaneous violence and nurturance is unsettling; the surges of emotion which, to some, may seem to feminise the men, are also at the heart of working-class violence. For Gaskell, these emotional surges are threatening and, were the middle class to exhibit more sympathy towards the working class, they might be able to prevent such violent outbursts from those who wrongly see their masters as uncaring and uninterested. For Engels, the opposite is true; the masters are opposed to the interests of their workers, and this emotion and violence has the potential to be harnessed for productive ends to overthrow the capitalist system. Patsy Stoneman examines the ‘“feminisation” of working-class men who performed from necessity the roles of child-care, sick-nursing, and housekeeping’ (Stoneman 2006, 46); as Jane Wilson calls Jem ‘mammy’ and John Barton becomes childish and is cared for by Mary, Stoneman argues, ‘The middle-class concept of fatherhood, separated from motherhood and based on “innate” authority, is indeed a cheat as paradigm for class relations because the working class cannot acquire in turn the authority of the “father” and “grow up” into a class of owners’ (47–48). As Stoneman notes, from the first chapter of Mary Barton, Gaskell stresses the association between working-class men and nurturance. Infants are ‘carried for the most part by the father’; George Wilson ‘was tenderly carrying a baby in arms’, John Barton ‘with some tenderness’ declares, ‘give me the baby’; and the ‘husbands…each carrying a baby, set off for a further walk’ (MB, 7–8). The repetition of tender proves, as Lisa Surridge argues, that the men are not only driven by practical necessity—their wives work, and they cannot afford nurses—but also are innately nurturing. Surridge traces the tenderness of the working-class men throughout the novel, noting Wilson tenderly carrying his dead child and being ‘tender as a mother’ to his injured bride, Barton tenderly soothing the lost Irish boy, and Wilson and Barton both acting as ‘rough, tender nurses’ (Surridge 2000, 334). She stresses that their ‘manly nurturance’ (334) is directed towards children and, more broadly, to working-class families and communities in general and is a strength of the working-class community. Though, as Ying Lee comments, working-class men’s involvement

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with domestic tasks led to the ‘diminution of the primacy of the head of the household’ (Lee 2007, 14), Gaskell portrays this change as potentially positive. She is sympathetic to tender, working-class fathers, and she strives to make her readers sympathise. This project of expressing and creating fellow feeling is, however, conflicted, as Gaskell suggests a troubling undercurrent to working-class masculinity. Although this nurturance could be interpreted as a positive strength, it could also be read in a negative light, as if they, like their counterparts among the emotional and nurturing middle-class females, do not have the capacity for rational thought required for a particular type of masculinity and citizenship and are better suited to be represented by middle-class men. Just as lack of education (and, for some, illiteracy) prevents labourers from being able to represent themselves textually and necessitates intermediaries (such as Gaskell) to translate their feelings to the page, their emotions prevent them from being able to represent themselves politically. Here, once the working-class men have been sufficiently feminised and infantilised, sexist political views can work to justify their exclusion from the political realm; similarly, Etienne Balibar argues that ‘class racism’ was ‘politically indispensable’ in allowing the ‘established social order’ to claim that the ‘dangerous classes’ did not have ‘political “competence”’ and to ‘deny them citizenship by showing…that they constitutionally “lacked” the qualities of fully fledged or normal humanity’ (Balibar 1999, 210). Gaskell suggests that these working-class men are not only potentially violently dangerous, but they also lack the rational and emotional ‘competence’ necessary for citizenship and enfranchisement. By showing that the tender or nurturing element cannot be integrated into the working-class masculine identity so long as they feel emasculated by their lack of power in the workplace and their lack of economic authority, a positive (nurturance) thus becomes corrupted into a negative (irrational violence). Gaskell makes it clear that although she wants to improve the terrible situations of working-class men such as Barton, she does not want them to be on the same level as the manufacturers. To prevent such a radical levelling of the classes, she reveals that they have been emasculated and their emotional and rational capacities have thus been damaged. Gaskell associates nurturance and tenderness not only with workingclass fathers but also with young working-class men. When Mary temporarily becomes a mad, debilitated child, Jem cares for her:

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She wakened once more; her soft eyes opened, and met [Jem’s] overbending look. She smiled gently, as a baby does when it sees its mother tending its little cot; and continued her innocent, infantine gaze into his face, as if the sight gave her much unconscious pleasure. But by-and-by a different expression came into her sweet eyes; a look of memory and intelligence; her white flesh flushed the brightest rosy red, and with feeble motion she tried to hide her head in the pillow. (MB, 336)

Jem is the ultimate nurturer: he is seen as a mother tending her baby. In one instant, Mary relives her coming of age, changing her look from one of infantine innocence to one of intelligence, from a baby’s gentle smile to a blushing woman’s awareness of the physical presence of a man she has publicly admitted to love. In this same instant, Jem transforms from a mother to a lover. Nevertheless, the fact that Mary’s gaze renders him maternal and masculine implies that it is the lens, and not the subject, that changes; he himself does not radically change from a nurturing figure to a romantic one. Although Stoneman is compelling in attributing working-class male nurturance to economic necessity and the need for both working-class parents to look after their children, it is also vital to note that Gaskell seems to be suggesting this emotional capacity is inherent in these men, for, as Jem shows, it is not only fathers who are nurturing and maternal out of financial obligation. Though Gaskell devotes much of the novel to depicting Mary as a woman of action—who travels from Manchester to Liverpool to track down Jem’s alibi and intrepidly takes to the sea—it would appear necessary to Gaskell to dismantle this type of strong independence, instead describing Mary as gentle, sweet, and feeble in order to portray Jem as a caring, nurturing protector. It seems impossible for Gaskell to imagine a means of reconciling a woman who confidently operates in the public sphere with a man who is tender in the domestic sphere; if she is to ‘unman’ Jem by rendering him maternal, she must also weaken Mary so that she needs this care. As Susan Zlotnick argues, ‘Independent female action of the sort that makes Mary a heroine proves incompatible with the values of Victorian femininity…Only by exaggerating the helplessness of a woman who has just proved herself capable of saving his life can he possibly justify his “natural” role as Mary’s protector’ (Zlotnick 2008, 603). Thus, though Gaskell does challenge gender norms throughout the text, she presents a conclusion that ensures the male is the stereotypical protector of the fragile female. Mary’s collapse links her to middle-class

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notions of femininity and to a sign of class rise or superiority in her ‘feminine’ fragility; though Gaskell is critical of middle-class frailty and invalidism (cf. Fanny Thornton in North and South), she struggles to reconcile a tender man with a strong female and is thus forced to weaken or diminish Mary in order for Jem to display his capacity for emotion. Another negative connotation of working-class masculine emotion is that this same emotion that can present itself as tender nurturance can also reveal itself in a menacing, violent manner. This shift from nurturance to violence is exemplified by John Barton, who moves from being a tender father to the murderer of a capitalist’s son. This considerable shift, however, has a clear explanation, grounded in the rhetoric of manliness. Rosemarie Bodenheimer writes of Barton’s decision to kill Harry as ‘an attempt to maintain some vestige of manhood under unendurable circumstances’ (Bodenheimer 2008, 521). This manifestation of manliness is not simply one affirming corporeal valour but is grounded in paternal pride. When Barton gives speeches about class antagonism, he never fails to mention a dying child, as, for example, when he declares: ‘If my child lies dying (as poor Tom lay, with his white wan lips quivering, for want of better food than I could give him), does the rich man bring the wine or broth that might save his life?’ (MB, 10). Further, when he hears the news that Carson declares that the ‘masters’ suffer, too, his first question is, ‘Han they ever seen a child o’ their’n die for want o’ food?’ (64). Here, not only is manliness clearly linked to fatherhood, but the domestic is also clearly linked to the political. Although, as Lisa Surridge points out, many critics have read this trope of child mortality as autobiographical, reflecting Gaskell’s own children’s death, many have also viewed it as an accurate representation of working-class life and mortality rates; moreover, Barton’s discourse is in keeping with contemporary Chartist discourse, which ‘conflated the right to vote with the right to care for self and family’ (Surridge 2000, 334) and held that ‘a working-class man should have the right to support and protect his own family members’ (335). Working-class masculinity is thus, in Chartist rhetoric, critically linked to fatherhood and the ability to care for one’s children. Surridge writes: [H]is shift away from nurturance to isolation and violence symbolizes the vulnerability of this ideal manliness in the climate of the 1840s. [Barton] is misshapen by a poverty which denies him manly strength in nurturance, by removing his avenues for spousal love and paternal care of his son

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…[U]ntil the failure of the Chartist petition, John Barton’s motive for political action is vested in the domestic and in this perceived right of fatherhood. Only when the Chartist petition fails does he take the morally wrong but diabolically logical step of depriving another father of such a right. (336–337)

Just as Gaskell depicts the capacity for nurturance and violence surging just below the surface in the same form, as the strong emotional capacity in working-class males, it seems that the causes for nurturance and violence also stem from a similar source: conflated political and domestic ideologies. Surridge argues that working-class men saw their domestic affairs and fatherhood as intrinsically linked to political problems and believed that political issues could be resolved through violence towards the domestic affairs of the rich. One could argue, however, that Gaskell is suggesting that middle-class mill owners (and readers) too easily assume a distinction between the public and private realms, viewing workers merely as ‘hands’ rather than a person with a family, whereas the workers assert themselves—albeit through violence—as people with a primary responsibility to their families. Whereas Surridge focuses on Barton’s ‘shift’ from tenderness to violent volatility, it seems as though it is not the shift that is paramount but the fact that their reason is the same: working-class men’s valuation of fatherly care and responsibility. This value makes them feel tenderly towards their own children and makes them feel justified in choosing a rich man’s son as the target of a political attack. The shift is not a drastic one; it is a potential brewing just below the surface. In this way, Gaskell subtly reworks Chartist discourse to suggest that it is fundamentally threatening to weave together political and domestic strands in such a way that justifies intrusion into the domestic sphere and violence towards another man’s children and, even more menacingly, middle-class women, as is the case in North and South. By presenting the working class as not respecting the boundaries between the public and private spheres, the political and the domestic, she implies that they are not suitable to be involved in this political sphere they clearly do not understand and to which they will respond emotionally rather than rationally. It is not only in the murderous figure of John Barton that one witnesses the transformation of emotion harnessed for nurturance to emotion that is uncontrollable. During the trial, Jem’s emotion exhibits itself on his body: ‘The prisoner hid his face once more to shield the expression of an emotion he could not control, from the notice of the

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over-curious’ (MB, 321). Here, Jem is at once feminine in his modesty and manly for, to the Victorians, a true man does not show his emotions. His emotion impairs not only his body but also his rationality: ‘The full meaning of the verdict could not at once penetrate his brain. He stood dizzy and motionless’ (321–322). Although in this instance the emotion is one of joy and not of violence, it is significant that he cannot control his emotion and thus cannot control his will; as Jill Matus explains, Many Victorian psychologists regarded the will or volition as the seat of reasoned self-governance. Without the exercise of will…‘the individual becomes a thinking automaton, destitute of the power to withdraw his attention from any idea or feeling by which his mind may be possessed…as the lower animals are to act in obedience to their instincts’. Accordingly, Gaskell’s remarks about the absence of a ‘high and intelligent will’ are revelatory of middle-class fears that working-class resistance and solidarity is likely to be unreasoned or misguided. (Matus 2007, 31)

Thus, Jem’s lack of control is suggestive of the general incapacity of the working class to exhibit control, of the ‘underlying association of the working classes with a lack of disciplined will and an inability to govern powerful feeling’ (Matus 2007, 31). In order to stress the fact that overwhelming emotion is not unique to Jem but common to the class, Gaskell sets the image of Jem against that of the similarly distraught Job Legh, with ‘the tears stealing down his brown furrowed cheeks, while he tried in vain to command voice enough to speak. He kept shaking Jem by the hand, as the best and necessary expression of his feeling’ (MB, 322). The fact that Job’s lack of command is linked to inarticulacy and a resort to physical expression when verbal expression is impossible is telling, for it strengthens Gaskell’s suggestion that the working-class men are not capable of having a voice that is heard and understood by others, in both the literal and political sense. That said, for Carlyle, speech was often suspect, and the reference to a silent or dumb feeling is intended as a gesture towards its sincerity and urgency. This influential suspicion of speech and fluency could suggest, therefore, that Job’s and Jem’s lack of speech is a sign of their sincerity. Gaskell suggests that if the middle class could become understanding and sympathetic to this voiceless sincerity, they could use this knowledge and feeling to represent them, literarily and politically; simultaneously, by exhibiting their sympathy, they could prevent voiceless emotional and physical outbursts from occurring.

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A Conflicted Subject---Working-Class Masculinity in the Public Sphere: Frankenstein’s Monsters, Ghosts, and Skeletons Just as in the domestic sphere Gaskell portrays working-class men as conflicted, in the public sphere she reveals them to be simultaneously pitiable and monstrous. She depicts John Barton as an uneducated monster: And so on into the problems and mysteries of life, until, bewildered and lost, unhappy and suffering, the only feeling that remained clear and undisturbed in the tumult of his heart, was hatred to the one class, and keen sympathy with the other. But what availed his sympathy? No education had given him wisdom; and without wisdom, even love, with all its effects, too often works but harm. He acted to the best of his judgment, but it was a widely-erring judgment. The actions of the uneducated seem to me typified in those of Frankenstein, that monster of many human qualities, ungifted with a soul, a knowledge of the difference between good and evil. The people rise up to life; they irritate us, they terrify us, and we become their enemies. Then, in the sorrowful moment of our triumphant power, their eyes gaze on us with mute reproach. Why have we made them what they are; a powerful monster, yet without the inner means for peace and happiness? (MB, 165)

This passage lays out many of Gaskell’s principal concerns. She suggests, like Carlyle, that ‘dumbness’ can be a powerful indication of sincerity. Further, sympathy appears at the forefront, a powerful force that drives people to action. Throughout her work, Gaskell strives to draw two divided classes together by drawing upon a promise of keen fellow feeling. For her, sympathy is only valuable when it is educated. She educates her readers about how to ‘read’ an unfamiliar class to evoke sympathy for them, and she promotes education for the working class so that they can likewise develop a sympathy that is less one-sided. Gaskell’s juxtaposition of abstract questions with the jarring image of a monster’s eyes highlights her conflicted response to these questions, for she—and, she implies, the ‘us’ of her readership—is torn between being ‘terrified’ and ‘sorrowful’. With ‘have you taught them the science of consequences?’, Gaskell charges her readers with the responsibility of education. Gaskell’s

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sympathy for the working classes is not without reservations, for she makes it clear that Barton’s judgement is erring. Nevertheless, workers like him are not to blame for such flaws; terrifying though the workers are to ‘us’, she makes it clear that ‘we’ created this monster and are thus accountable for it. Though her laying claim to blame is powerful, by doing so, she empties the working class of agency, for they appear merely as an object of the capitalists. Gaskell’s argument does not allow for a shift from the past failures of paternalistic rule, in which the workers were denied education to a present and future rejection of paternalism, by a working class grown capable of their own analysis and agency. This responsibility for the monstrous working class is emphasised by the fact that Gaskell likens John to Frankenstein—or, rather, Frankenstein’s monster. Many critics, such as Margaret Ganz, have, as Patsy Stoneman points out, ‘only…noticed [this image] with embarrassment’ (Stoneman 2006, 48) as Gaskell confuses the monster with his creator. In a sense, however, this case is not one of confusion, as there are many critical readings of Frankenstein (1818) that suggest the creator and monster are one being or can be interpreted as one. Whether Gaskell agreed or whether she made a careless error, the image is still effective, for she portrays the working class as the infantile, inarticulate, monstrous creation of the industrialists. This recourse to a figure of terror is significant; not only, as Jenny Uglow writes, does Gaskell see the people in the same light, as ‘neglected children turning on their creators’ (Uglow 1993, 204), but she also views them as monstrous and makes it explicit that the labourers will be monsters—never fully human—unless they are educated. With the image of Frankenstein’s monster, she presents a warning of the danger in leaving an entire class uneducated and suggests the corresponding creator—the upper and middle classes—will be terrorised and potentially destroyed. Stoneman argues: The inadequacy of the workers to their new situation is rendered…in terms of inarticulacy and unsteadiness—characteristics of children [infant = unable to speak]…Articulacy is the goal of the ‘infant’. The monster confronts his maker with his speech on Mont Blanc; Barton takes the Chartist petition to Parliament. Speech promises participation in the symbolic order…it is a claim to be heard and replied to, accepted as ‘adult’ by the ‘father’. (Stoneman 2006, 48)

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Gaskell’s reference to Frankenstein’s monster functions thus as a warning to her readership of the dangers of leaving an entire class inarticulate and uneducated. One could argue that the middle class’s refusal to listen to or accept the petition is not evidence of the inarticulacy or dumbness of the working class, so much as their own resistance and deafness to what they had to say. Just as Gaskell in her preface writes of ‘the agony which from time to time convulses this dumb people’ (MB, 3) and as Carlyle writes of their inarticulacy, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein depicts ‘the miserable monster whom [he] had created…mutter[ing] some inarticulate sounds’ (Shelley 2008, 40). Though the monster learns to speak in the space of the text, he is not ultimately articulate in a manner that is acceptable to society, as the only man apart from Frankenstein who will listen rationally to him is blind. Whereas Frankenstein’s monster is articulate to Shelley’s readers, however, Barton is not to Gaskell’s. However, Gaskell does not reveal a larger project of what she thinks should be done with this Frankenstein’s monster. Further, there is a shift in the passage between Barton and the ‘people’, making it unclear whether it is the multitude of workers who resemble Frankenstein’s monster or the individual Barton; one part of the novel’s instability is the dual sense of the more or less autonomous individual, who can be named, understood, and sympathised with, and the same individual seen as potentially part of a mob. In other words, John Barton behaves as if he somehow were a mob, or at least the embodiment of the mob’s tendency to violence. Just as Gaskell notes that the working class terrifies ‘us’, Frankenstein ‘trembled with rage and horror’ at the sight of his monster (Shelley 2008, 76); this fear is all the more real because, as Frankenstein makes clear, the link between the creator and creation are ‘only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us’ (77). Similarly, Gaskell questions whether the middle class should criticise the working class before considering the fact that they made them unhappy, as Frankenstein becomes ‘[u]nable to endure the aspect of the being I had created’ (39) and the creature exclaims, ‘Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?’ (105) and wonders, ‘Shall I not then hate them who abhor me?’ (78). Though Frankenstein’s creature gains articulacy and can demand of his creator, ‘Let your compassion be moved, and do not disdain me. Listen to my tale: when you have heard that, abandon or commiserate me, as you shall judge that I deserve. But hear me’ (78), Gaskell notes that

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the uneducated working class stare in ‘mute’ reproach and thus require an intermediary to present their tale. Frankenstein opens with Walton’s epistolary declaration, ‘I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me; whose eyes would reply to mine’ (8), echoed in Gaskell’s language of mutely reproaching eyes and unguided sympathy. The creature is enraged by a lack of sympathy, declaring that ‘finding [him]self unsympathized with, [he] wished to tear up the trees, spread havoc and destruction’ (111) and that he desires a female companion ‘with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being’ (118). Just as Shelley shows the destruction and terror resulting from a lack of sympathy, Gaskell stresses the parallel danger associated with a lack of sympathy for the working class. Both authors show that sympathy and pity are closely linked, and both, too, show the links between sympathy, pity, and horror; Shelley’s Walton narrates, ‘my pity amounted to horror’ (188), and Gaskell writes of sympathy for the working class and also of the ‘people…terrify[ing] us’ (MB, 165). Frankenstein’s narration also highlights the fine line between feelings of compassion and horror: ‘I compassionated him, and sometimes felt a wish to console him; but when I looked upon him, when I saw the filthy mass that moved and talked, my heart sickened, and my feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred’ (Shelley 2008, 121). This conflict matches Gaskell’s own, and in referring to Frankenstein, Gaskell draws on a literary tradition of linking terror to a complicated system of compassion, sympathy, and pity. Charles Kingsley’s Alton Locke (1850) also draws on this Frankenstein reference, referring to ‘some dozen miserable, ragged, half-starved artizans’: ...the oppressed, the starved, the untaught, the despairing, the insane; ‘the dangerous classes’, which society creates, and then shrinks in horror, like Frankenstein, from the monster her own clumsy ambition has created. (Kingsley 1967, 310–311)

The language here echoes that in Mary Barton, not only with the mention of Frankenstein but also with that of fear. Kingsley writes of society ‘shrink[ing] in horror’ at the monster they have created. Further, both passages highlight the lack of education of the workers, as well as their despair and suffering. On one hand, these workers seem pitiable: miserable, starving, despairing, and ragged in Kingsley’s passage, and

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bewildered, lost, unhappy, and suffering in Gaskell’s; in this vein, they seem sad and weak, and readers are led to feel sorry for them. On the other hand, they are seen as dangerous, horrifying creatures, worthy of fear rather than sympathy. Thus Frankenstein seems to come to stand for and encapsulate the conflicted nature of the working class, as well as the conflicted response to the working class, as both Gaskell and Kingsley show. Although ultimately left unresolved, Gaskell’s allusion serves to bring up an array of issues surrounding gender, for she specifically chooses a monster created by a man, not birthed by a woman. Stoneman argues, ‘although the technocratic “father” can create a “child”, he cannot nurture it. Frankenstein attempts to control his monster by physical restraint and by rules, which are ineffective, just as “magistrates, and prisons, and severe punishments”…fail to restrain the Manchester strikers’ (Stoneman 2006, 48–49). In referring to Frankenstein, Gaskell stresses not only the importance of voice and education but also, as Stoneman argues, that of the maternal role. Though the nurturance of workingclass men could be seen as positive, this literary allusion hints at the dire problems that arise when the ‘maternal function’ is eliminated completely and man alone attempts to control an inarticulate infant. Reference to Frankenstein—whether consciously or not, given Gaskell’s error—draws up considerations of the gendered act of creation as well as the alienating act of capitalist production. Elsie Michie analyses the novel’s subtext about ‘alienated labour’ (Michie 1990, 93) and production that ‘renders the worker both “deformed” and “barbaric”’ (93). Creation and production aside, the resulting identity itself is likewise problematic. Halberstam argues that Victor’s ‘humanness depends as much upon his status as male, bourgeois, and white as the monster’s monstrosity depends upon his yellow skin, his gargantuan size, his masslike shape, and his unstable gender’ (Halberstam 2000, 32). The unstable gender of the monster is key to understanding the contradictions that the working-class male and his strong emotional currents represent. This indeterminacy and monstrosity surrounding the figure of the working-class male makes Gaskell’s project of sympathy all the more conflicted. Barton is not a threatening monster for long; he then transforms to a figure of death. Barton had followed his cause—his ironically visionary cause—without really seeing. Manchester’s middle-class inhabitants feel the labourers pressing against them without really seeing them; likewise, Barton has been pushing against the masters without really seeing and

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understanding the problem. Gaskell suggests, as before, that sight is key to sympathy. As Audrey Jaffe declares, ‘feeling of course depends on representation: in order to be known, it must appear’ (Jaffe 2000, 14). Mr Carson expects to hate his son’s murderer, but, once he truly sees Barton, his house, and his ‘grinding squalid misery’ (MB, 356), he feels ‘unaccustomed wonder’ in reflecting on the ‘different lots of the brethren of mankind’ (356–357), reinforcing Gaskell’s insistence on a brotherhood linked by humanity, not by class. Gaskell’s aim is to make the reader, too, truly see the working class, and then to wonder, feel, and accept. Once Carson holds Barton’s ‘powerless frame’ and sees his ‘departing soul’, he understands him; having his soul, home, and cause made visible renders Barton sympathetic. Joined by the ties of sympathy, pity, and common humanity, Carson cannot hate Barton: ‘something of pity would steal in for the poor, wasted skeleton of a man, the smitten creature, who had told him of his sin, and implored his pardon that night’ (356). Carson’s physical connection corrects Barton’s perception of industrialists, who he believes ‘kept him at arm’s length, and cared not whether his heart was sorry or glad; whether he lived or died,—whether he was bound for heaven or hell’ (370). This distancing, this lack of sympathy, is healed by the novel’s end, on an individual level, by means of individual education and by a new type of proximity between the classes: one that is physical, visual, and sympathetic. Carson understands what drove Barton to act as he did, and Barton understands that Carson is a caring human being. Moreover, Carson’s pity is affected by the sight of Barton’s ‘poor, wasted skeleton’; Barton has transformed from a horrifying, threatening Frankenstein’s monster to a skeleton, simultaneously pitiable and unsettling. His body has been drained of life before he dies, and this ‘undead’ state—though no longer menacing—is still uncanny and disturbing. Similarly, when Mary sees him, his sunken face is ‘like a skull, with yet a suffering expression that skulls have not!’ (341). As Gaskell prefaces the skeleton comparison with a pledge of pity, she follows the skull simile with ‘[y]our heart would have ached to have seen the man, however hardly you might have judged his crime’ (341). Both instances emphasise Gaskell’s ambivalence; though she insists one must pity Barton, the images of skulls and skeletons are unsettling and thus could limit her readers’ potential for sympathy. Mary’s reaction to the ‘skull’ mirrors this conflict:

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But crime and all was forgotten by his daughter, as she saw his abashed look, his smitten helplessness. All along she had felt it difficult…to reconcile the two ideas, of her father and a blood-shedder. But now it was impossible. He was her father! her own dear father! and in his sufferings, whatever their cause, more dearly loved than ever before. His crime was a thing apart, never more to be considered by her…There was no change in her father’s position, or in his spectral look. He had answered her questions…by monosyllables, and in a weak, high, childish voice. (341–343)

Barton, in death as in life, is inarticulate and childish; furthermore, he is uncannily doubled, simultaneously a nurturing ‘dear’ father and a criminal. His status as ‘blood-shedder’ is cast aside by Mary, who focuses instead on his spectral, skeletal state, which would imply his own shedding of blood. Though Gaskell wants her readers to sympathise with John as Mary does, her sympathetic agenda is subtly undermined, for though Barton is pitiable, he is also frightening; he is an unsettling skull and also disturbingly ‘spectral’ while still alive. This idea of doubling has struck critics since the novel’s publication. A contemporary Unitarian manufacturer, William Rathbone Greg, criticises Gaskell for the extremes of Barton’s doubles: But indeed the lights and shades are thrown too strongly on every thing relating to John Barton. The effect may have thus been made more startling: but, we think, at the expense of probability. It is not that he has, more or less, two natures. That is common to us all. Our objection is, that his conduct is radically inconsistent with his qualities and character. (Greg 1991, 171)

Greg argues that, if Barton were such an intelligent workman, he would have laid aside money, and he lists measures a smart workman would have taken to provide for hard times; in doing so, however, he misses Gaskell’s earlier point: ‘No education had given [Barton] wisdom…He acted to the best of his judgment, but it was a widely-erring judgment’ (MB, 165). In other words, though he is portrayed as an intelligent worker, Barton’s lack of education accounts for his failure to act in the way Greg assumes an intelligent worker would act. Greg’s position is also strained in its assumption that all rational persons always behave with absolute rationality, regardless of circumstance. Furthermore, in seeing Barton’s ‘two natures’ as common and thus an unsuitable explanation for his conduct,

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Greg misses the gothic otherworldliness of what Stoneman aptly deems Barton’s ‘phantom “double”’ (Stoneman 2006, 53). Jenny Uglow writes, ‘The theme of a double nature pervades Mary Barton, and images from fantasy, like the mermaid or Frankenstein’s monster, locate this duality below rational understanding. They also display the author’s own deep prejudices and fears’ (Uglow 1993, 204). Uglow’s analysis helps explain why Greg’s rational working-through of Barton’s actions is irrelevant: this duality is not, as Greg sees it, an excuse for Barton’s actions but rather a means to show the unease surrounding the figure of Barton. Gaskell creates an aura of horror around Barton by associating him with gothic tropes and by explicitly showing the horror he evokes in his daughter. Not only does Barton’s double—the spectre, the Frankenstein’s monster—come from ‘below rational understanding’, but also the notion of his double emanates from delirium: [Mary] had revealed in her delirium…a sort of horror of him; a dread of him as a blood-shedder, which seemed to separate him into two persons,— one, the father who had dandled her on his knee, and loved her all her life long; the other, the assassin, the cause of all her trouble and woe. (MB, 334)

In other words, this un-rational figure stems from the un-rational. The language of horror and dread echoes that of gothic fiction, as does the notion of uncanny doubling. Mary’s view of her doubled father fits in with Freud’s definition of the ‘uncanny’ as ‘that class of frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar’ (Freud 1997, 195) and as involving ‘a doubling, dividing, and interchanging of the self’ (210). Fred Botting writes, ‘Doubles, alter egos, mirrors and animated representations of the disturbing parts of human identity became the stock devices’ of nineteenth-century Gothic as ‘uncanny effects’ replaced eighteenth-century Gothic’s ‘sublime terrors’ (Botting 1996, 11). Gaskell, however, does not limit herself to contemporary gothic forms; ‘sublime terror’ is best encapsulated in Mary’s terror of her father: ‘For the knowledge of her father’s capability of guilt seemed to have opened a dark gulf in his character, into the depths of which she trembled to look…At such times she could have cried aloud with terror, at the scenes her fancy conjured up’ (MB, 340). A multiplicity of gothic forms—both horror and terror—confront Mary after she has allowed herself to confront the image of her father. Earlier, she had

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stopped herself from thinking of her father, ‘a black veil being drawn over her father’s past, present, and future life’ (257). As Eve Sedgwick remarks, the veil stands as a ‘boundary and a disguise for something else’ and is also ‘the line between the conscious and unconscious minds’ (Sedgwick 1981, 256). Whereas the veiled figure, the dark unknown, is often more terrifying, in this case, the veiled Barton is more acceptable. When Mary lifts this veil and is forced to examine her unconscious as well as the physical fact that her father is a murderer, the result is delirium, terror, and an uncanny doubling of him. In associating the figure of John Barton with such imagery, Gaskell reveals her extreme unease about what he represents; though, like Mary, she wants to sympathise with one side of Barton’s nature—the nurturing, fatherly side—her project of garnering sympathy for the working class is also severely conflicted by these unsettling images. Those ‘uneducated’ questions that plague Barton and make him a man of violence, a gothic figure akin to Frankenstein’s monster, also envelop him in a cycle of gothic haunting. He dwells on the gap between the rich and the poor and his hatred of the rich to an obsessive extent: Then came a long period of bodily privation; of daily hunger after food…the body took its revenge for its uneasy feelings. The mind became soured and morose, and lost much of its equipoise. It was no longer elastic, as in the days of youth, or in times of comparative happiness; it ceased to hope. And it is hard to live on when one can no longer hope. The same state of feeling which John Barton entertained, if belonging to one who had had leisure to think of such things, and physicians to give names to them, would have been called monomania; so haunting, so incessant, were the thoughts that pressed upon him. I have somewhere read a forcibly described punishment among the Italians, worthy of a Borgia. The supposed or real criminal was shut up in a room, supplied with every convenience and luxury; and at first mourned little over his imprisonment. (MB, 164)

The sinister language of Barton’s body taking revenge for its uneasy feelings explicitly details not only how but also why he appears as he does by the end of the novel. His lack of hope makes it difficult for him to live, explaining why he exists in this liminal space between living and dead. Moreover, he only becomes a figure of haunting after he himself is haunted. Haunting breeds haunting, and Gaskell links this haunting

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to criminality. Although ‘supposed or real’ could imply wrongful convictions, it also suggests that criminality is difficult to define in clear ways. Barton is a criminal according to the law, but for him, the capitalist system itself is even more criminal, for it has created this huge divide. Barton is defined by what he lacks: food, equipoise, hope, leisure time, physicians, health, sanity, judgement, wisdom, and education. All he has is the haunting question of why the rich and poor are so separate, his hatred towards the rich, and his sympathy for the poor. His sympathy for the capitalists will be achieved by the novel’s conclusion, but it is too late to be of much consequence. By the end of the novel, Barton becomes a figure of haunting himself. Prior to his death, he is held in comparison to a ‘haunting ghost’: A foot-fall was heard along the pavement; slow and heavy was the sound. Before Jem had ended his little piece of business, a form had glided into sight; a wan, feeble figure, bearing with evident and painful labour a jug of water from a neighbouring pump. It went before Jem, turned up the court at the corner of which he was standing, passed into the broad, calm light; and there, with bowed head, sinking and shrunk body, Jem recognised John Barton. No haunting ghost could have had less of the energy of life in its involuntary motions than he, who, nevertheless, went on with the same measured clockwork tread until the door of his own house was reached. And then he disappeared, and the latch fell feebly to, and made a faint and wavering sound, breaking the solemn silence of the night. Then all again was still. (333–334)

Gaskell’s word choice is telling: although a heavy footfall could denote a deliberate, powerful walk, Barton’s slow, heavy footfall creates the image of a weighty object that is barely moving forward—an image that is a menace to progress, symbolising the opposite of what is desirable: quick, energetic workers. Yet, although the sound suggests something akin to a massive, sluggish animal, the figure creating it is just the opposite: a wan, feeble figure. His loss of strength implies a loss of masculinity, for his body is described as a genderless ‘it’, and it is hardly surprising that Jem is not able to distinguish his sex, as wan, feeble features appear largely reserved for females in stereotypical Victorian terms. Gaskell is often praised for deviating from gender stereotypes by portraying women who are strong and hardy—such as Mary Barton and North and South’s Margaret Hale— yet it is equally noteworthy that she shows men who are feeble. Barton’s

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body has been drained of blood, with pale unhealthy colouring, and equally drained of power, transforming his labouring body into a weak, ineffective one. His body has been reduced to the only labour he can perform: agonisingly gathering the bare essentials for survival. Barton has become defeated, with his head hung low, a body that is sinking and shrinking, falling into a state of nothingness. His labour is to blame for this defeat, for Barton cannot escape from the mechanical motion the factory routine has inflicted on his body, still moving with a tread like measured clockwork. These ‘involuntary’ motions have been scripted onto his body, leaving it to be dictated by its daily labour rather than ‘the energy of life’. Deirdre David notes that Boucher’s suicide in North and South and Stephen Blackpool’s death in Hard Times both ‘suggest that there can be no escape from a system which is so totally encompassing that it determines the manner of death as well as life’ (David 1981, 34); just as Boucher is stained by the dye from the fabric in his death, Barton’s labour becomes written on his dying body. In likening him to a haunting ghost, Gaskell reinforces the idea of habit and repetition with an eerie, otherworldly twist. His appearance here in the text is brief, as he appears and disappears with the fleetingness of a ghost, but it is an appearance that haunts and disturbs the memory. Though his decrepit state evokes sympathy in the reader, it also creates unease, for Barton is uncannily associated with figures of haunting before he is dead. Further, haunting implies an action of dependence: one cannot haunt without someone or something else being haunted. Barton is a liminal figure, both haunting and living, and both haunted and on the verge of death, and the fact that he occupies this liminal space highlights the way in which much remains unresolved. Gaskell leaves it unclear whom Barton is haunting, but this lack of precision is all the more sinister, suggesting that he haunts more than one specific person: he haunts Jem and members of his own class, the capitalist system that pushed him to murderous lengths, and Gaskell’s readership in general. After John Barton kills Harry Carson, the symbol of the class of masters, he is not only forgiven by Carson’s father—the patriarch of this capitalist system—but Mr Carson also asks for his sympathy: ‘“And have I had no suffering?” asked Mr Carson, as if appealing for sympathy, even to the murderer of his child. And the murderer of his child answered to the appeal, and groaned in spirit over the anguish he had caused’ (MB, 352). This desire to be understood, to deserve sympathy, links the classes through death:

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The eyes of John Barton grew dim with tears. Rich and poor, masters and men, were then brothers in the deep suffering of the heart; for was not this the very anguish he had felt for little Tom, in years so long gone by, that they seemed like another life! The mourner before him was no longer the employer; a being of another race, eternally placed in antagonistic attitude; going through the world glittering like gold, with a stony heart within, which knew no sorrow but through the accidents of Trade; no longer the enemy, the oppressor, but a very poor and desolate old man. (353)

Divisions of money, class, and labour are broken down in the face of suffering, affect, emotion, and loss. The rich ‘other’ becomes poor in a way unrelated to money, a poverty of spirit and not of capital, and the two understand each other, alike in this emotion. Barton finally understands that he has ‘killed a man’—not a gentleman, not a master, but a man like him—‘and a brother’ and ‘now he knew that no good thing could come out of this evil, even to the sufferers whose cause he had so blindly espoused’ (353). It is not in the act of killing that he recognises evil, but in meeting the father of the man he has killed, seeing first-hand the effects of this evil. This discourse of brotherhood is in keeping with revolutionary rhetoric, from the French Revolution’s insistence on ‘fraternity’ to Chartist discourse, which pressed for international brotherhood and whose proponents addressed audiences as citizens and brothers. Whereas Marx insists on two separate brotherhoods, a ‘brotherhood of the oppressors against the oppressed’ (Marx 1975, 388), Gaskell uses the rhetoric of brotherhood to emphasise a brotherhood of humanity that stretches across classes. By harnessing this discourse for the opposite cause, Gaskell attempts to undo revolutionary divisions and focus instead on national unity. This unity is only possible if political and economic issues are put aside, as well as views of social racism; not only must the middle class sympathise with the labourers and realise their common interests, but the labourers must also stop viewing the rich as ‘being[s] of another race’ (MB, 355). Although Gaskell may give more attention to the sorrows of the working class in Mary Barton, she does not solely blame the masters for the current state of the nation but asserts that there are misconceptions on both sides that must be overcome. The solution, however, is not a dismantling of the class structure; Gaskell does not seek radical change, and in this respect, her project of sympathy and demystification is also

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troubled. If the working-class man is completely demystified—rendered a man, a father, a son, a feeling human—through deep sympathetic exchanges that emphasise a common humanity, then the class structure is dismantled, replaced by this common humanity that lays the foundation for universal suffrage. Whereas on one hand, Gaskell strives to create fellow feeling for the working man, on the other hand, she seems to want to limit any political implications of this sympathy: sympathy alone is enough, she suggests. Though Gaskell blames her publisher for the title’s change from John to Mary, the fact that she chooses to end her tale within the realm of domestic fiction, marriage, and children suggests unease, an anxiety about the difficulty of the task of focusing too much sympathy on the labouring male. Instead, it is easy to convince readers to sympathise with women’s labour being reinscribed into the domestic sphere, as Mary’s eventually is. Gaskell illustrates a popular belief that when women work outside of the home, the domestic is in danger of becoming destroyed. Contemporary writer Bessie Rayner Parkes writes of the danger of women working in factories, causing the deterioration of their health as they reach ‘wild, half-savage state[s]’: ‘the absence of married women from their homes [should] be discouraged by every possible moral means, since the workman must be very wretched indeed before his wife’s absence can be a source of real gain’ (Parkes 2005, 489). Likewise, Mrs Wilson supports John Barton and Jem Wilson in their opposition to working wives, declaring she knows nine men ‘driven to th’ public-house by having wives as worked in factories’; these women let their ‘house go all dirty, and their fires all out’. That dirty, cold house was not ‘tempting for a husband to stay in’, so he ‘soon finds out gin-shops, where all is clean and bright, and where th’ fire blazes cheerily, and gives a man a welcome as it were’ (MB, 118). Neglecting to tidy reflects a shirking of domestic ‘feminine’ roles and a lack of consideration for the husband. It appears much easier to focus sympathy on women in the working class, for the argument to remove them from the public sphere is in keeping with middle-class domestic ideology. For this reason, perhaps, Gaskell limits her focus on John Barton and her project for sympathy towards the male labourers and shifts her focus to Mary, a subject certain of garnering sympathy from middleclass readers. By changing her focus, Gaskell seems to attempt to conceal the fact that she has no solution within Manchester for working-class men. By banishing Jem to Canada and John Barton to death, it is clear

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that she is not certain to what end the sympathy of middle-class readers should be directed. Though sympathy between Carson and John is a step towards the resolution of class conflict, because Barton dies directly afterwards, it is extremely unclear how this sympathy will work in the longer term. Rather than focusing on the nebulous future associated with working-class men who are both pitiable and fearful, Gaskell shifts to a ‘cleaner’ resolution: the reinscription of Mary’s labour in the domestic sphere and a familial structure familiar to her readers. In doing so, the novel shifts from the industrial social problem novel to the realms of domestic fiction, prompting Nancy Armstrong’s claim that ‘[r]espectable fiction…represented political conflict in terms of sexual differences that upheld a peculiarly middle-class notion of love’ (Armstrong 1987, 41). The romantic conclusion does not resolve the political or class issues, nor does it resolve the contradictions that working-class masculinity represents. Though happy, the domestic resolution is by no means settled, for Gaskell leaves John Barton to haunt the text.

Notes 1. Although the Portico Library holds no record of Chartism being checked out by William Gaskell, their borrowing archives only date back to 1850, and Gaskell would have read Chartism much earlier. Issue Books do show the Gaskells borrowing Carlyle’s Latter-Day Pamphlets, History of Friedrich II of Prussia, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, Sartor Resartus and Lectures on Heroes, The Life of John Sterling, and this trend of following Carlyle’s works—as well as the similarity in language—implies that Gaskell read Chartism (Healy 2017, Appendix). Not only did Gaskell follow Carlyle’s works, but he read hers as well and wrote to her that Mary Barton is ‘a real contribution (almost the first real one) towards developing a huge subject, which has lain dumb too long, and really ought to speak for itself, and tell us its meaning a little, if there be any voice in it at all!’ (Carlyle 1991, 72). 2. Records indicate that Mill’s Principles of Political Economy was borrowed by the Gaskells in 1864, but it is not clear whether or not that was their first time borrowing it, as the Portico Library borrowing records are only available after 1850 (Healy 2017, Appendix). 3. That said, urban geography would result in increasing division, with ‘class-based’ residential ‘segregation and polarisation’ as the middle class became more separate from the ‘misery and squalor of working-class living conditions’ (Shelston 1990, 30).

CHAPTER 3

Men, Gentlemen, Masters, and Hands in North and South

Whereas Mary Barton (1848) focuses on narratives of jealousy—commercial greed, romantic competition, and rivalry for pity—North and South (1854) focuses on narratives of union—workers’ unions, marital unions, and connections among the classes. As with her earlier industrial text, Gaskell maintains an interest in individual sympathetic connections, specifically between Southerner Margaret Hale and Northerner John Thornton. In one of their first encounters, Gaskell establishes Thornton’s fascination with Margaret’s arms and hands: [Margaret] looked as if she was not attending to the conversation, but solely busy with the tea-cups, among which her round ivory hands moved with pretty, noiseless, daintiness. She had a bracelet on one taper arm, which would fall down over her round wrist. Mr. Thornton watched the re-placing of this troublesome ornament with far more attention than he listened to her father. It seemed as if it fascinated him to see her push it up impatiently, until it tightened her soft flesh; and then to mark the loosening—the fall. He could almost have exclaimed—‘There it goes, again!’… She handed him his cup of tea with the proud air of an unwilling slave; but her eye caught the moment when he was ready for another cup; and he almost longed to ask her to do for him what he saw her compelled to do for her father, who took her little finger and thumb in his masculine hand, and made them serve as sugar-tongs. (NS, 79)

Margaret is presented as confined to the domestic, with teacups and domestic duties as her sole concerns. Tied to the national connotations © The Author(s) 2020 M. Lowe, Masculinity in the Work of Elizabeth Gaskell, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48397-5_3

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of tea as an eminently English commodity and a product of British colonialism, Margaret is also compared to as an ‘unwilling slave’, an exploited colonised subject with no agency. She is reduced to her hands, which, as pure and untainted ‘ivory’, are linked to colonialist wealth and ownership. Thornton centres his attention on her hands, which embody traits confined to traditional notions of femininity and domesticity: prettiness, silence, and daintiness. Her hands are objects to be possessed, but not by Thornton; only Mr Hale has the power to use his daughter’s hands in place of tools. Margaret is ‘compelled’ to submit to this objectification and this symbolic representation of patriarchal authority and male supremacy. Margaret continually strives to be useful, and though her use here may be limited to the trivial or domestic, she focuses all her attention on this serving of others, her authority over teacups and sugar, and she thus neglects the conversation. Gaskell juxtaposes Margaret’s lack of attention with Thornton’s neglect of Mr Hale’s conversation; whereas Margaret is preoccupied with being useful, Thornton is inattentive due to his absorption with Margaret’s bracelet. Thornton, ever-controlled, cannot control his fetishistic transfixion on her bracelet as it ‘tightened her soft flesh’; the ‘fall’ takes on ‘sexual overtone[s]’ (Fromer 2008, 141). The bracelet mirrors the struggle between the controlled and the irrepressible: Margaret cannot control the ‘troublesome ornament’ that interferes with her labour, and Thornton is unable to repress his desire. Gaskell thus imbues this seemingly innocent domestic tableau with sexual energy, as Thornton engages in voyeuristic spectatorship. Margaret is simultaneously seen as arrogantly above him and as his server, as an object to be consumed by his eyes and the source of nourishment to be consumed, and as a utilitarian body and a sexual desire. In establishing a dichotomy between how Margaret presents herself and how she is perceived, Gaskell sets the stage for future conflict between Margaret and Thornton in their gendered views of hands as useful or desirable. One could easily read a scene about bracelets and teacups as misplaced in a novel about manufacturers and industrialist concerns, with Gaskell lapsing into domestic rituals and losing focus of her ‘Condition of England’ work. There is, however, a larger point: the scene establishes Gaskell’s use of hands as the thematic link between the novel’s political and romantic plots. Here, hands are explicitly gendered—Margaret’s hands are ‘little’, ‘pretty’, and ‘dainty’ in contrast to her father’s ‘masculine hand’, which Thornton wishes his could replace. Throughout

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the novel, Gaskell expands the gendered language of hands to include regional and class connotations, with the Northern handshake and the working-class ‘hands’. In drawing attention to Thornton’s sexual fascination with Margaret’s hands, Gaskell builds the foundation for hands as a significant symbol: of desire, utility, individual connections, and gendered differences. This scene’s significance in establishing Gaskell’s thematic linkage between hands and issues of gender cannot be overstated. Her attention to Margaret’s hands, with its undertones of colonialist exploitation, a lack of agency, and male objectification, problematises notions of femininity as tied solely to domesticity, ‘noiselessness’, and patriarchal control. Margaret’s unawareness of the way in which her body is perceived as sexualised emphasises an ongoing gendered concern in the text and highlights Tosh’s point that ‘[w]ithin the culture of respectability at least, men became the sole bearers of sexuality’ (Tosh 2007, 46).1 Throughout the text, Gaskell works to overturn the dynamic of this scene, giving Margaret a voice in the public sphere, for workers’ rights, while continuing to nuance the dichotomy between the utilitarian and sexualised female body. Further, Mr Hale’s transformation of Margaret’s hands into tools is both endearingly playful and authoritatively objectifying, highlighting John Tosh’s claim: Yet playfulness was never more than one facet of fatherhood. Authority, guidance and discipline continued to be viewed as central to the father’s role. Masculinity, after all, was essentially about being master of one’s own house, about exercising authority over children as well as wife and servants. Indeed, rule as ‘father’ embodied the primary meaning of the term ‘patriarchy’. (Tosh 2007, 89)

By this point in the novel, Gaskell has already begun to dismantle the notion of Mr Hale as an effective ruling patriarch, as he leaves Margaret to handle key familial responsibilities. While this scene may appear to reinstate him temporarily in a role of authority over his daughter, doing so only at the level of ‘this bit of pantomime’ (NS, 79) calls this pattern of paternal power into question, hinting at Gaskell’s wider project of replacing family structures based around dynamics of submission and control with egalitarian, companionate marriages. Additionally, this scene gestures towards key debates regarding Victorian masculinity, specifically with regard to manliness, sexuality, and

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self-control. As Herbert Sussman explains, ‘the hegemonic bourgeois view defined “manliness” as the control and discipline of an essential “maleness” fantasized as a potent yet dangerous energy’ (Sussman 1995, 13).2 Sussman’s point that ‘[t]his definition of manhood as self-discipline, as the ability to control male energy and to deploy this power not for sexual but for productive purposes was clearly specific to bourgeois man’ (11) bears particular relevance to Gaskell’s grappling with gendered class concerns in an industrial context; there is a wider gendered significance behind Thornton’s ongoing struggle to repress and control his attraction to Margaret. Thornton will need to find a way to manage this sexual energy and deploy it towards productive means in order to fulfil certain bourgeois masculinity requirements, just as he will later need to find ways to make his business model more productive. By grounding this early focus on hands in issues of gender roles, manliness, sexuality, and selfdiscipline, Gaskell establishes hands as a key symbol for the evolution of Thornton’s masculinity. In a later scene, Gaskell continues to draw attention to Margaret’s hands. Mrs Hale bemoans the dirtiness of Milton, linking hands to blinds as objects to be cleaned: ‘it is impossible to keep the muslin blinds clean…And as for hands—Margaret, how many times did you say you had washed your hands this morning [?]’ (NS, 82). Mrs Hale implies that Helstone was cleaner, not the site of sullying manual labour, as the image of Margaret’s untainted, ornamented ivory hands is replaced with that of labouring, soiled hands in need of purification. Moments later, this utilitarian vision shifts to Thornton’s conception of hands as a means to human connection. However useful Margaret strives to be, she fails in using her hands to serve this function: When Mr. Thornton rose up to go away, after shaking hands with Mr. and Mrs. Hale, he made an advance to Margaret to wish her good-bye in a similar manner. It was the frank familiar custom of the place; but Margaret was not prepared for it. She simply bowed her farewell; although the instant she saw the hand, half put out, quickly drawn back, she was sorry she had not been aware of the intention. Mr. Thornton, however, knew nothing of her sorrow [and] walked off, muttering… (85–86)

Margaret fails to understand Northern habits; apparently unaccustomed to physical interaction, particularly with male visitors, she does not recognise her body as a vehicle for individual relationships. Once Margaret

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perceives the hand as a conduit for acknowledging her acceptance of Milton customs, Thornton has rescinded his offer of personal contact. For Margaret, the handshake is distinct to Thornton, and Gaskell uses it as an indicator for their relationship throughout the novel. Gaskell stresses that just as Margaret can be objectified and observed, she can be misread; Thornton places great importance on her hands from the start and, failing to read her sorrow, interprets her rejection as scornful. Gaskell’s early fixation on hands lays a foundation not only for hands as gendered symbols of usefulness and desire but also for the handshake as acknowledgement of and familiarity with another class. In a subsequent meeting, Margaret smiles and is ‘sunny’ yet again refuses Thornton’s offer of a handshake (124). Gaskell gives no indication of Margaret’s reaction to the handshake; the incident is confined to Thornton’s perspective: ‘But she did not put out her hand to him, and again he felt the omission, and set it down to pride’ (124). This refusal is important as a literary device. Gaskell repeatedly invokes references to such fairy tales as Sleeping Beauty (10) and Cinderella (11, 92), making it clear that although her work, as a ‘social problem’ novel, re-envisions the industrial workplace, it also re-envisions romantic love and marriage. Since Margaret has twice refused Thornton’s offer of a handshake, one must anticipate a third offer, as every fairy tale grants three chances. Were Thornton to fail a third time, one could consider the relationship doomed. By arranging this double refusal, Gaskell draws attention to the third offer, another brief and seemingly inconsequential passage occurring at the Thorntons’ dinner party: ‘He [Thornton] shook hands with Margaret. He knew it was the first time their hands had met, though she was perfectly unconscious of the fact’ (161). Margaret’s failure to see anything personal or significant in the act foreshadows her use of her body as an impersonal shield at the riot. Gaskell employs the discourse and symbolism of traditional romantic love only to complicate it, for she stresses that there is no mutual recognition of sentiment, as the handshake is significant only to Thornton. Similar to the teacup scene, an act of Margaret’s hands serves to captivate Thornton and lead him to spectatorship over Margaret’s body, ‘the smooth ivory tip of the shoulder; the round white arms, and taper hands’ (162). A major contrast between the scenes is that, here, Margaret is ‘perfectly motionless’ (162); she later reflects, ‘I felt like a great hypocrite to-night, sitting there in my white silk gown, with my idle hands before me, when I remembered all the

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good, thorough, house-work they had done to-day. They took me for a fine lady, I’m sure’ (167). Although the response by Thornton to her hands in both scenes is similar, Margaret sees herself as useful serving tea, whereas here she laments her idle hands and motionlessness. Moreover, not only does she draw attention to the fact that she was idle, but she also regrets that nobody knew that she had been doing work. Gaskell’s suggestion that by wearing silk and sitting idly, Margaret can be taken— or perhaps mistaken—for a fine lady implies that, for many, ‘ladies’ are defined by riches and lack of labour. Just as Thornton would rather be considered a man than a gentleman, Margaret does not wish to be considered a fine lady and later wishes to be seen as a woman ‘worthy of the name of woman’ (195). If nobody can recognise her usefulness, she has failed. By linking hands to notions of desire and labour, Gaskell fuses the romantic and political aspects of her novel and draws attention to the fact that notions of gender, work, and sexuality are inextricably linked to regional and class differences. This novel’s emphasis on connections between regions and classes is accented by Gaskell’s attention to hands, the handshake, the touching of hands, and individual bodily connections between people. With an attention to hands, she also explores potential models of gentlemanliness that she expels from the text, as well as connections between the classes. By linking an examination of the Condition of England with an examination of masculinity, Gaskell suggests that understanding different frameworks of masculinity is vital to understanding national concerns. She uses an attention to hands to join individuals, classes, regions, and the nation together; this solution is not, however, a radical one but rather one that remains ambivalent on many accounts and stresses the importance of individual acts of sympathy, not wide-scale transformations or institutional changes. Further, she remains ultimately ambivalent on the subject of masculinity. Many figures of the gentleman are banished from the space of the text, she continues to alternate between nurturing and violent representations of working-class masculinity, and she struggles to create a master who is strong, sympathetic, and fiscally viable. After Mary Barton’s publication, many criticised Gaskell for being unfairly biased towards sympathising with the working class, and she acknowledges that she ‘represented but one side of the question’ but deflects responsibility for writing ‘a true and earnest representation of the other side’, with language that echoes her earlier self-effacing claims that she knew nothing of political economy:

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I think the best and most benevolent employers would say how difficult they, with all their experience, found it to unite theory and practice…I think [Sam Greg], or such as he, might almost be made the hero of a fiction on the other side of the question[—]the trials of the conscientious rich man, in his dealings with the poor. And I should like some man, who had a man’s correct knowledge, to write on this subject. (Letters , 119–120)

In North and South, she takes up the task that she had earlier prescribed only to male authors: the representation of a conscientious employer. While the goal of making ‘intelligent work-people’ understand their employers might prove difficult given that North and South was serialised in Household Words, which was ‘out of reach of most working-class readers’ budgets’ (Betensky 2010, 8), the project of sympathy clearly remains at the forefront of Gaskell’s mind. Gaskell’s discussion of garnering sympathy in her readers is not as overt in North and South as it is in Mary Barton; instead, sympathy becomes a framework for the novel as Gaskell shows characters engaging in sympathetic exchanges, thus exemplifying the importance of fellow feeling without making a direct appeal to her readership for it. Shirley Foster argues that Margaret is ‘not a merely mechanical link between opposing masters and men but actually works to reconcile them [thus suggesting] that female power, centred in the responses of the heart, is the real revolutionary force in a male-dominated environment’ (Foster 1985, 148). Gaskell suggests that this ‘female power’ need not necessarily be confined to the female; rather, Margaret shows her power by promoting sympathy in men as well. Through the process of sympathising, Margaret learns to understand Northerners and change her understanding of gentlemanliness and masculinity, and Thornton undergoes a crucial transformation in learning to sympathise with his workers and in changing his conception of Margaret as useful as well as desirable. Not only does Gaskell use Thornton’s development to show that sympathy need not be gendered female, but she also ties sympathy to notions of masculinity by demonstrating that his adoption of this trait is ultimately tied to his ability to transform his struggle for self-control to productive ends, as his business aims and sexual desires become intertwined. This education through sympathy is rendered tangible through Gaskell’s focus on hands, with physical connection mirroring human connection. The ‘romance’ plot and the ‘social problem’ plot are intertwined through her focus on hands, as sympathy and individual connections are presented as alternatives to institutional

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change. Most significantly, hands link these plots to what Sussman would deem Thornton’s ‘masculine plot’: ‘For the Victorians manhood is not an essence but a plot, a condition whose achievement and whose maintenance forms a narrative over time. It is this narrative of manhood achieved and manhood lost [that] I term the “masculine plot”’ (Sussman 1995, 13).

Sexual and Class Conflict Having already alerted her readers to the link between hands and questions of utility, control, and desire, Gaskell adds further layers of meaning to the way in which the body is not only gendered but also classed when Margaret urges Thornton to speak to working-class male rioters at Marlborough Mills. In contrast to the scenes of hands and touch in domestic, interior spaces, this scene takes a noteworthy spatial turn: to the boundary between Thornton’s residence and the public mill-yard, which carries significance for gender relations. This scene hinges on Margaret’s goal to make her body useful, as in the tea scene, and, similarly, on Margaret’s arms and on the ways in which her body is interpreted not in a utilitarian manner but a sexual one. Though the female body is a primary focus of the riot, there are likewise powerful implications for working-class and industrialist male bodies. Gaskell uses a range of sensory language to depict the working-class men in the mob. First, they sound terrifying: ‘the gathering tramp… was heard’, ‘an increasing din of angry voices raged’, and their great beats ‘made the strong gates quiver, like reeds before the wind’ (NS, 174). As Chris Louttit notes, these sounds are ‘intimidating’ and ‘primitive’, with ‘tribal terms’ and ‘savage-sounding noises’; they contrast with Gaskell’s ‘excited, almost celebratory rendering of the sounds of industrial work’, suggesting that the ‘sounds of industry can be seen as the affirmative channelling of such potentially dangerous energy’ (Louttit, 2007, 140). Likewise, when not channelled productively, working-class masculinity poses a significant threat, both to industrialist progress and to the middle-class female. Sounds then merge with sights, as the masculine mob becomes a spectacle for female observation as Mrs Thornton, ‘women-servants’, and Margaret gather, ‘fascinated to look on the scene which terrified them’ (NS, 174). When Thornton speaks, the mob reacts:

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And the sound of his well-known and commanding voice, seemed to have been like the taste of blood to the infuriated multitude outside. Hitherto they had been voiceless, wordless, needing all their breath for their hard-labouring efforts to break down the gates. But now, hearing him speak inside, they set up such a fierce unearthly groan…He came in a little flushed, but his eyes gleaming, as in answer to the trumpet-call of danger, and with a proud look of defiance on his face, that made him a noble, if not a handsome man…[I]n this real great time of reasonable fear and nearness of terror, [Margaret] forgot herself, and felt only an intense sympathy—intense to painfulness—in the interests of the moment. (174–175)

The tension between the working-class men and Thornton has gendered implications for class. Gaskell’s language renders the mob frighteningly vampiristic, craving blood. Gaskell returns to the issue from Mary Barton of the dumb inarticulacy of the working-class male, now explicitly linking the voicelessness to the working body as the men are reduced to a ‘hardlabouring’ multitude. This voicelessness is not replaced with meaningful speech or rational demands but rather with unearthly, monstrous groans. When faced with public conflict, the working-class male body is portrayed as inhuman and terrifying, whereas Thornton’s defiance gives him ‘noble’ attributes, and he is linked to an almost-religiously chivalric ‘trumpetcall’. In contrast to the male displays of aggression, Margaret feels only an intense, painful sympathy for both sides, for she understands the situation of the working-class men: Many in the crowd were mere boys…some were men, gaunt as wolves, and mad for prey. She knew how it was; they were like Boucher, with starving children at home [and enraged that Irishmen were to] rob their little ones of bread. Margaret knew it all; she read it in Boucher’s face… (177)

The workers are both animalised—gaunt as wolves, mad for prey—and humanised, since Margaret is now able to distinguish faces in the mob, to see individuals, and thus to ‘read’ the scene and react with sympathy and understanding for their motivations. Whereas sound alone was terrifying, the visual opens up the space for sympathetic reactions. Margaret urges Thornton to speak to the men with kindness rather than military force: ‘Speak to your workmen as if they were human beings. Speak to them kindly. Don’t let the soldiers come in and cut down poor creatures who are driven mad…If you have any courage or

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noble quality in you, go out and speak to them, man to man’ (177). Significantly, her appeal for sympathy and speech is also an appeal to Thornton’s masculinity, imbued with notions of valour, and to the shared status of ‘man’—a category she knows carries weight with Thornton. In the private space, Margaret speaks confidently and ‘passionately’; however, as Thornton faces her petition to his masculinity and agrees to go outside, to cross the threshold into the public, she begins to doubt herself, thus suggesting that assumptions about masculinity—and assumptions about voice and sympathy—are spatially charged. Margaret wishes for speech in place of wild noise: If Mr. Thornton would but say something to them—let them hear his voice only—it seemed as if it would be better than this wild beating and raging against the stony silence that vouchsafed them no word, even of anger or reproach. But perhaps he was speaking now; there was a momentary hush of their noise, inarticulate as that of a troop of animals. (178)

Gaskell remains conflicted between depicting the working-class men as sympathetic and animalistic. As in Mary Barton, she highlights the workers’ inarticulacy and prompts the middle class to offer explanations. This insistence on rational speech stands in contrast to the noise of chaos of the ‘maddened’ crowd of ‘infuriated men and reckless boys’ (178); not only does Margaret seek to change the type of sound and the register of speech, but she also seeks to change the way in which Thornton sees the scene. Margaret sees that the working-class men seek to intimidate Thornton and urge each other ‘on to some immediate act of personal violence’ (178). She sees men take off their clogs to use as missiles and rushes outside, ‘in face of that angry sea of men, her eyes smiting them with flaming arrows of reproach’ (178). The visual prompts her intervention, and joining the inarticulate mob and the silent Thornton, she struggles to recover her breath and ‘could not speak, but held out her arms towards them’ (178). Her arms and her body stand in for her voice: ‘Never, for your bidding!’ exclaimed Mr. Thornton. And instantly the storm broke. The hootings rose and filled the air,—but Margaret did not hear them. Her eye was on the group of lads who had armed themselves with their clogs some time before. She saw their gesture—she knew its meaning,—she read their aim. Another moment, and Mr. Thornton might be smitten down,—he whom she had urged and goaded to come to this

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perilous place. She only thought how she could save him. She threw her arms around him; she made her body into a shield from the fierce people beyond. Still, with his arms folded, he shook her off. (179)

Gaskell’s repeated gesture to arms—from the armed lads to the negotiation between Margaret’s shielding and Thornton’s folded arms—echoes her earlier emphasis on hands as significant gendered and classed symbols. The images of battle here—of Margaret as a shield—suggest, as Foster points out, ‘masculine strength’ and Margaret, though wounded, ‘has triumphed physically (Thornton escapes unhurt) and morally (she has shamed him into confronting the mob)’ (Foster 1985, 150). Margaret acts because of her assumptions about the power of a woman’s body as inviolable, yet the scene is ambiguous because, as Felicia Bonaparte affirms, her ‘idea of heroism is not female but male’ and Gaskell ‘metaphorically…describes Margaret…as male [and] conceives her as a warrior’ (Bonaparte 1992, 192). Whereas the narrator in Mary Barton serves as the sympathetic intermediary, here Margaret does, begging Thornton to speak for the sake of the workers but also striving to protect him from them when he does. Acting as intermediary, she tells him, ‘You did not see what I saw’ and she tells the workers, ‘do not damage your cause by this violence’ (NS, 179). Gaskell draws attention to the fact that Margaret is not listening to the hootings but rather ‘her eye was on… she saw…she read…’. The language of vision is significant, for Margaret sees both sides—literally and figuratively. This focus on the visual relates to Audrey Jaffe’s argument that ‘sympathy in Victorian fiction is inseparable from issues of visuality and representation because it is inextricable from the middle-class subject’s status as spectator and from the social figures to whose visible presence the Victorian middle class felt it necessary to formulate a response’ (Jaffe 2000, 8). Gaskell makes it clear that both sound and vision are significant; ultimately, however, both of these senses fail Margaret; Thornton does not speak rationally to the workers, and they do not have a voice outwith the ‘hootings’: neither Thornton nor the workers ‘see’ or understand the other. Though Margaret—vested with the power of sympathy—can see, read, and understand both sides of the conflict, the masculine response to conflict is tied to physicality: the working-class men and boys see few options for action outside their ‘heavy wooden clogs’, and the industrialist male sees few options outside ‘commanding’ resolution, backed up by military force.

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Promoting a visual or an auditory intervention proves fruitless, and Margaret has recourse to the sense of touch and to a physical intervention, which also proves problematic: If she thought her sex would be a protection…she was wrong. Their reckless passion had carried them too far to stop…A clog whizzed through the air. Margaret’s fascinated eyes watched its progress; it missed its aim, and she turned sick with affright, but changed not her position, only hid her face on Mr. Thornton’s arm… A sharp pebble flew by her, grazing forehead and cheek, and drawing a blinding sheet of light before her eyes. She lay like one dead on Mr. Thornton’s shoulder. Then he unfolded his arms, and held her encircled in one for an instant: …‘You fall—you hundreds—on one man; and when a woman comes before you, to ask you for your own sakes to be reasonable creatures, your cowardly wrath falls upon her! You do well!’ They were silent while he spoke. They were watching, open-eyed and open-mouthed, the thread of dark-red blood which wakened them up from their trance of passion. Those nearest the gate stole out ashamed; there was a movement through all the crowd—a retreating movement. (179)

She expects that she can shield Thornton by dint of her sex alone and sees herself as using her body not in a personal way, but as an eminently utilitarian tool of ‘protection’, one that could be interchanged with any other female body to protect any other male body. Both of these expectations are shattered; her body is not read in this utilitarian way, nor is it seen as utterly inviolable to the mob, which attacks despite her presence. Not only has the strikers’ ‘reckless passion…carried them too far’, but Margaret has also misread the class struggle; though ‘the power of the maiden’ (Harman 1998, 64) may be upheld in the domestic space, it is not necessarily defended in public space. Further, it is not just space but class that matters. Margaret’s belief in her femaleness as a protection is classed; the implication is that no gentleman would think of striking a lady. Gaskell’s language—stressing the cruel savagery and recklessness of the mob—highlights the primitive, uncivilised nature of working-class men whose passions are unbounded and menacing, leading them to ‘trance[s] of passion’. Likewise, Gaskell hints at the national danger in working-class males’ emotional volatility and physical violence by echoing Carlyle’s images of French revolutionary mobs as ‘frenzies’, ‘mad fits of hot and of cold, fierce rage alternating so incoherently with panic

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terror’ (Carlyle 2005, 232). This frenzy and mixture of rage and terror corresponds with the ‘fury of the mob’ (NS, 310), the ‘savage satisfaction of the rolling angry murmur’ (177), and movement beginning ‘as unreasoningly, perhaps as blindly, as the simultaneous anger’ (180). The nightmare of the mob cannot be ended by the risk of injuring a woman, as Margaret believed, but it can be stopped by her very bloodshed, hence the fixation on ‘the drip of blood from her wound’ (180), with the blood suggesting ‘a literally, physiological sign of female desire’ (Shuttleworth 2008, xxviii–xxix). Both the active, shielding body and the wounded, bleeding body become sexualised. The male strikers’ violation of the female body shows how Gaskell links the sexual inextricably with the political. The power struggle between masters and labourers is ended—or at least paused—by Margaret’s blood; the ‘unequivocally political’ fight is interrupted by romantic and sexual passion (Zemka 2009, 811). This altering of the political into the sexual through violence towards a woman in a ‘symbolic rape’ (David 1981, 41) has larger national consequences, as Deirdre David argues; the threat to the middle class by an ‘uneducated and undisciplined working-class’ is ‘intensified’ by the menace to woman, the ‘protectress of middle-class ideals…the centre of family life’ (David 1981, 42–43). The sexual implications of Margaret’s body affect the political struggle, and the political struggle has private implications. The mob’s violence heightens the threat of working-class masculine volatility, for it goes so far as to violate the female body, the symbol of the nation, that which is meant to be inviolable. Before the strikers flee from Margaret’s bloodshed, they respond to Thornton’s masculinity and his failure to protect himself. A striker declares that the stone was meant for Thornton but he ‘wert sheltered behind a woman’ (NS, 179); Thornton ‘quivered with rage’ and tells them, ‘Now kill me, if it is your brutal will. There is no woman to shield me here. You may beat me to death’ (180). Thornton invests in the power of authority and the institution of the military: ‘The distant clank of the soldiers was heard just five minutes too late to make this vanished mob feel the power of authority and order. He hoped they would see the troops, and be quelled by the thought of their narrow escape’ (180). The threat of a possible military intervention echoes the Peterloo Massacre (1819) and its escalation into violence, and Gaskell suggests that Thornton must learn to relinquish his interest in institutions and focus on sympathy for the individual instead.

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Though resolutely still in front of the workers, Thornton suddenly ‘darts’ up to Margaret; further, whereas he is unable to speak meaningfully to the mob, he finds a voice to tell the fainted Margaret that he loves her: ‘Dead—cold as you lie there, you are the only woman I ever loved!’ (181). Though ‘inarticulately’ and though ‘rather moaning than saying the words’, this turn to speech is nevertheless significant. In echoing the workers’ inarticulacy in Thornton, Gaskell suggests, perhaps, that this voicelessness is not just a class issue but rather, perhaps, a gendered one. Thornton is as incoherent as the rioters and, like them, he is incapable of being heard; whereas they have no political voice, he has no romantic voice, for Margaret is unconscious. By linking these conflicts, Gaskell suggests a resolution that is linked for the working-class and industrialist male: both must find a voice, and both must learn the importance of physical self-control, or of investing in sympathetic, individual physical connections rather than in group—mob or military—male physical force. The riot scene opens up the space for Margaret’s sexual selfrecognition, and it also releases Thornton’s passion and alters his relationship with his mother. He acknowledges his love for Margaret, and after his mother tells him she sent for the doctor, he thanks her: he ‘partly held out his hand to give her a grateful shake. But she did not notice the movement’ (186). Though a small moment, it echoes Margaret’s earlier neglect of Thornton’s handshake and puts Mrs Thornton in Margaret’s position; this subtle comparison between the two women hints at the jealousy Mrs Thornton feels. She ‘scornfully’ inquires, ‘Are you become so helpless as to have to be defended by a girl?’ (186), suggesting a loss of masculine strength. When she insinuates that a ‘girl in love will do a good deal’ (186), Thornton’s reaction upon hearing that his love may be returned, of ‘heav[ing] with passion’, ‘startle[s]’ his mother: She was not sure of the nature of the emotions she had provoked. It was only their violence that was clear…His eyes glowed, his figure was dilated, his breath came thick and fast. It was a mixture of joy, of anger, of pride, of glad surprise, of panting doubt; but she could not read it. (186)

Gaskell moves from exploring Margaret’s sexualised figure to Thornton’s dilating, panting, glowing eroticised body. As he focuses on Margaret’s touch and arms—‘Everything seemed dim and vague beyond—behind— besides the touch of her arms round his neck—the soft clinging which made the dark colour come and go in his cheek as he thought of it’

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(188)—the halting, self-correcting sentence structure mirrors his excited state. Gaskell shows the effects of this passion first to Mrs Thornton, who is made ‘uneasy’, naturally, given his seeming state of arousal, but also out of a growing sense of the ‘pang of jealousy’ as well as ‘mortification at the little notice he had taken of the rare ebullition of her maternal feelings’ (189). Then, she explores the effects of Thornton’s virility on Margaret and his bodily reaction to rejection. Gaskell’s changing focus on the senses highlights the significance of sound in reading the working-class male body, the implications of the visual—being made the spectacle—for the sexualised female body, and the repercussions of touch for the erotically charged male body, as Thornton is haunted by Margaret’s touch. In the riot’s aftermath, Gaskell returns to images of hands and touch. Although Margaret had made herself an active subject in the scene, she remains an object to be read—or misread—by the spectators. Though Margaret is offended by others’ misreading of her act as personal rather than as using her body as a utilitarian tool of protection, Gaskell hints that Margaret is so unselfconscious that she misreads herself: ‘But what possessed me to defend that man as if he were a helpless child! Ah!’ said she, clenching her hands together, ‘it is no wonder those people thought I was in love with him, after disgracing myself in that way. I in love—and with him too!’ Her pale cheeks suddenly became one flame of fire; and she covered her face with her hands. When she took them away, her palms were wet with scalding tears. (190)

Such a display of emotion indicates that Margaret’s actions are not solely rational and impersonal. Her hands become indicators of her frustration and, after being used as shields to hide her overwhelming emotion, they bear testimonies of her ‘scalding’ emotion. Gaskell later parallels Margaret’s clenched hands when Thornton recollects Margaret’s mysterious rendezvous at the train station: ‘the remembrance shot through him like an agony, till it made him clench his hands tight in order to subdue the pain’ (270). In these passages, Margaret’s arms betray her unconscious emotion as she utilises them as instruments of protection, whereas both Thornton’s and her hands are the ultimate means to repress passion and agony. Gaskell draws attention to hands in order to reveal emotion in Margaret and Thornton; she also uses hands to tie romantic elements into social realism. Thornton, in keeping with his class and the times, refers to

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his workers not as men but as ‘hands’, reducing a whole group of people to their labouring body parts. This linguistic supremacy mirrors the physical and social supremacy, and Thornton acknowledges that Margaret objects: ‘Miss Hale, I know, does not like to hear men called “hands”, so I won’t use that word, though it comes most readily to my lips as the technical term, whose origin, whatever it was, dates before my time’ (120). Thornton is correct in pointing out that the word choice is not his own. In 1854, William Forster notes, ‘we call them…“men,” sometimes “operatives” or “hands”, to get rid of the distinction of sex’ (Forster 2005, 478). Further, Dickens draws attention to the term in Hard Times (1854), writing, ‘among the multitude of Coketown, generically called “the Hands”,—a race who would have found more favour with some people, if Providence had seen fit to make them only hands, or, like the lower creatures of the seashore, only hands and stomachs’ (Dickens 1992, 59).3 Margaret, although wary of having her own body read as personal rather than useful at the riot, disapproves of this overly utilitarian vocabulary, in which workers are portrayed as mere labouring bodies instead of as human beings. Thornton later informs Higgins to leave his brains at home; as the terminology would suggest, workers are seen only in terms of their labour, and their hands as industrial tools are separated from the rest of their bodies. Similarly, the industrialist Hamper remarks that he is ‘comforted by the conviction that [the strikers] were in a worse predicament than he himself,—for he had head as well as hands, while they had only hands; and if they drove away their market, they could not follow it, nor turn to anything else’ (NS, 146). Though Thornton is given ‘no consolation’ by this thought, this distinction—that one needs a head to be a master and that labourers are reduced to their hands—is key, for it calls to mind Thornton’s ‘position he had earned with the sweat of his brow’ (146) and how workers can raise themselves from the position of hands to heads of mills: ‘It is one of the great beauties of our system, that a working-man may raise himself into the power and position of a master by his own exertions and behaviour’ (84). Though Gaskell later complicates this notion, having Thornton depend on Margaret’s inheritance rather than his own sweat, she emphasises that Thornton believes in the ideal of self-help. Later in the novel, Mr Bell speaks to Thornton of the Hales’ move from the South to the land of ‘[c]otton, and speculations, and smoke, well-cleansed and well-cared-for machinery, and unwashed and neglected hands’ (352), drawing attention to the irony that the workers are less

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cared-for than the inanimate machinery. Thornton tells Bell, ‘I’m building a dining-room—for the men I mean—the hands’ (361), suggesting that his views have changed and that he now instinctively views his workers as men. This self-correction is suggestive of Bakhtin’s emphasis on the ways in which a speaker’s ‘orientation towards the listener is an orientation toward a specific conceptual horizon, toward the specific world of the listener’ (Bakhtin 1981, 282).4 To borrow Bakhtin’s line of thinking, one could argue that Gaskell draws attention to Thornton’s no longer using the term ‘hands’ neutrally as the expected rhetoric of the day, as well as to his consciousness of the fact that Bell might assume he has become overly deferential to Margaret’s influence. Thornton’s change of word choice hints that he still wants to appear as a master and as a capitalist who sees the labourer before the human; just as he did not want his actions to be interpreted as having let Margaret influence his hiring, he does not want to be seen as having submitted to Margaret’s language. Nevertheless, it is clear that Margaret, in teaching Thornton to humanise his workers, has played a key role in Thornton’s education, in helping him to see others as he wants to be seen: as a man. Gaskell’s focus on hands thus again fuses the romantic plot to that of her social realist project. Margaret seeks to change not only Thornton’s vocabulary for the ‘hands’ but also his manner of speaking and listening to them. Specifically, she hopes for sympathy between Higgins and Thornton: ‘If he and Mr. Thornton would speak out together as man to man—if Higgins would forget that Mr. Thornton was a master, and speak to him as he does to us—and if Mr. Thornton would be patient enough to listen to him with his human heart, not with his master’s ears—’ (NS, 308–309). Such comments suggest that for Margaret—and possibly for Gaskell— some nebulous ‘manly’ status may cause one to be a master, as its absence may leave one a hand, while ignoring the way that social status may make one into a man; Margaret seems to focus on the way in which our circumstances make us rather than the way in which we also make them. In attempting to reconcile master with human, Margaret appears to consider solely the individual; though she succeeds in creating individual sympathetic bonds, it is not ultimately clear how they will affect class relations in general. Margaret’s sought-after individual fellow feeling becomes a reality, for, while at Higgins’s house to offer him a job, Thornton shakes his hand: ‘“And this is a deal from me”, said Mr. Thornton, giving Higgins’s hand a good grip’ (326). This exchange is a sign of partnership and a willingness

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to work together. Gaskell’s repetition of the handshake in the industrial setting links it to the romantic plotline; she has previously made it clear that Thornton places much importance on Margaret’s handshake, and his offer here signals another individual personal connection. Thornton inquires into details of Higgins’s life, separating him from the masses and his hand from ‘the hands’. In doing so, Thornton realises the need for close personal exchanges and declares: My only wish is to have the opportunity of cultivating some intercourse with the hands beyond the mere “cash nexus”…I have arrived at the conviction that no mere institutions…can attach class to class as they should be attached, unless the working out of such institutions bring the individuals of the different classes into actual personal contact. Such intercourse is the very breath of life. (431–432)

In borrowing Carlyle’s phrase of ‘cash nexus’ (cf. Chartism (1840), Past and Present (1843)), Thornton appears to be engaging not just with the workers themselves but also with contemporary critics (Pryke 2005, 557). Thornton’s language is key; this focus on attachment has implications of ‘join[ing] in sympathy or affection to a person, place’ (OED ‘intercourse’). Gaskell rejects the institutional attachment, replacing it with a sympathetic attachment, the ‘very breath of life’. Moreover, her use of ‘intercourse’ suggests social communication, sexual connection, and mutual dealings in trade and commerce (OED); this fusion of the economic, social, and sexual mirrors Gaskell’s marriage of Margaret and Thornton as an economic, social, and sexual union, highlighting her belief that all three realms are closely related and that a resolution in one arena can resolve issues in another. That said, Thornton is not overconfident but rather asserts that this personal intercourse will not prevent strikes but may make future ones less ‘bitter, venomous sources of hatred’ (NS, 432). Here, Thornton, like Margaret, separates the individual from the class, rejecting the institutional and relying instead on personal interaction; though Gaskell presents this as the key to class conflict and resolution, in separating the individual from the class, she seems to avoid discussing and making it altogether clear how the class issues will be resolved. Gaskell’s emphasis on the individual over institutional change may be an evasion of proposing broader industrial reforms, but it is also a claim that is later supported by Samuel Smiles: ‘Even the best institutions can give a man no

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active help. Perhaps the most they can do is, to leave him free to develop himself and improve his individual condition’ (Smiles 2002, 17).

The Figure of the Gentleman In addition to using images of handshakes and ‘hands’ in the political plotline of the novel to focus on individual connections rather than institutional change, Gaskell also uses a focus on hands to emphasise Thornton’s difference to other models of gentlemanliness. In presenting Margaret’s offers of marriage, Gaskell emphasises two men’s treatment of Margaret’s hands. In the case of the Southern gentleman, Henry Lennox, his physical possession and force are met with firm, bodily, silent rejection from Margaret: he ‘tak[es] her by surprise, and get[s] sudden possession of her hand, so that she was forced to stand still and listen’ while she ‘was quietly, but firmly striving to extricate her hand from his grasp’ (NS, 28–29). In contrast, when Thornton first proposes, Gaskell emphasises his passion and his impulse to hold, not possess, Margaret’s hand, as well as the fact she has the agency to speak: he ‘held her hand tight in his. He panted as he listened for what should come. He threw the hand away with indignation, as he heard her icy tone’ (195). Whereas Margaret only acts to counter Lennox’s actions, as Thornton leaves, she offers him her hand, a sign of recognition of that ‘frank familiar custom of the place’ (86), the previously rejected handshake. Nevertheless, Thornton ‘reject[s] her offered hand and mak[es] as if he did not see her grave look of regret’ (196). Both Margaret and Thornton act and react, whereas when Lennox acts, Margaret only reacts. Taken in a broader sense, Gaskell shows that the man, not the gentleman, leaves room for female action and suggests that the stereotypical Southern gentleman’s incompatibility with a progressing society is the way in which he treats women. While Thornton’s work leads others to dispute his status as a gentleman, Lennox’s status as a gentleman is not questioned—his profession as a barrister is one of the few with a long-standing connection to gentlemanliness (Gilmour 1981, 6)—but his embodiment of certain gentlemanly traits makes him fail as a romantic lead. Though contemporaries could have praised the way in which Lennox ‘premediate[s] his action’ and has but one instance when ‘speech had slipped from him unawares’ (NS, 25), Gaskell problematises Lennox’s gentlemanly reserve; after Margaret refuses his proposal, she muses:

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Here was she disturbed and unhappy…while he, not many minutes after he had met with a rejection of what ought to have been the deepest, holiest proposal of his life, could speak as if briefs, success, and all its superficial consequences of a good house, clever and agreeable society, were the sole avowed objects of his desires…Then she took it into her head that…his lightness might be but assumed, to cover a bitterness of disappointment… (32)

Though it is deliberately unclear whether Lennox’s feelings are superficial or masked, his actions could be read as a sign of gentlemanly control, for Ruskin notes that a gentleman displays ‘apparent reserve’: ‘a perfect gentleman is never reserved, but sweetly and entirely open, so far as it is good for others, or possible, that he should be’ (Ruskin 1905, 347). In contrast, both Thornton and Margaret are disturbed, stunned, and unhappy after Thornton’s fiery proposal. By first presenting Lennox’s gentlemanly proposal, Gaskell opens his model of masculinity for critique, creating a foil for Thornton’s emotional depth and strong feeling. Whereas Margaret has power by the end of the novel in her relationship with Thornton—as John Pikoulis argues, even more so than in the imbalanced case of Jane Eyre and Rochester (Pikoulis 1976, 188)— were she to marry Lennox, she would not have power or agency. Not only does Lennox fail to exhibit consideration for women—‘in the halfcontemptuous, half-indulgent tone he generally used to Edith’ (NS, 415)—but he also seeks to win Margaret not because of romantic desire but for desire of social advancement: …the clever and ambitious man bent all his powers to gaining Margaret… He saw the latent sweep of her mind, which could easily (he thought) be led to embrace all the objects on which he had set his heart. He looked upon her fortune only as a part of the complete and superb character of herself and her position: yet he was fully aware of the rise which it would immediately enable him, the poor barrister, to take. Eventually he would earn such success, and such honours, as would enable him to pay her back, with interest, that first advance in wealth which he should owe to her. He had been to Milton on business connected with her property…and with the quick eye of a skilled lawyer, ready ever to take in and weigh contingencies, he had seen that much additional value was yearly accruing to the lands and tenements which she owned in that prosperous and increasing town. (415–416)

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The style of blended free indirect discourse mixed with the narrator’s authoritative summary makes it difficult to maintain which are Lennox’s thoughts and which are the narrator’s assumptions. Although he is deemed ‘fully aware’ that Margaret’s fortune is only part of her character, he nevertheless focuses on her property. This desire for fiscal advancement problematises Lennox’s form of gentlemanliness. As Robin Gilmour points out, the ‘paradox of gentlemanliness’ is that ‘money was needed to sustain rank, but the gentleman’s highest quality, disinterestedness, presupposed an indifference to mere monetary considerations’ (Gilmour 1981, 98). While Lennox sees their alliance as a business exchange, he is careful to make himself in no way dependent on her, to the point of imagining paying back his debts to her. This detail—considering repayment ‘with interest’—is irritatingly legalistic in its scrupulousness, in contrast to the end of the novel, when Thornton disregards Margaret’s offer of money and looks to the sentiment beyond the business proposal to the emotion in Margaret, as he ‘trembl[ed] with tender passion… besought her with another tremulous eager call…knelt by her side…and whispered-panted’ as he laid his cheek against hers (NS, 435). Here, Thornton casts aside Lennox’s business proposal—and the model of his own earlier marriage proposal—and presents instead a relationship based on mutual attraction and respect, as both Thornton and Margaret declare themselves unworthy. Though Margaret’s money is significant to Thornton’s business and to their future livelihood and dynamics, Thornton’s emotional response is markedly different from Lennox’s legal rationalisations. Thornton does not consider how to enforce Margaret’s dependence; in contrast, Lennox ‘brighten[s] with exultation’ when he believes ‘she was learning to depend upon him!’ (433). Whereas Margaret becomes deeply involved with the concerns of Thornton’s workers and interested in the workings of his mill, it is clear that she would be kept separate from Lennox’s work and confined to the arena of flowers, bonnets, and domestic affairs. This lack of equality, coupled with a lack of deep feeling, marks the failure of Lennox in Margaret’s—and the reader’s—eyes. Gaskell suggests that Lennox represents an old type of masculinity and gentlemanliness, one characterised by restraint and distance, that needs to be replaced by the new man, infused with feeling and frankness. Lennox exemplifies the figure of the polite gentleman, who engages in conversation as a social pleasantry, not to espouse his particular views: ‘Mr Lennox saw now that he had annoyed [Mr Bell]; and as he had

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talked pretty much for the sake of saying something, and so passing the time while their road lay together, he was very indifferent as to the exact side he took upon the question, and quietly came round’ (346). Gaskell’s representation of Lennox’s brand of gentlemanliness fits with contemporary James Fitzjames Stephen’s remark that ‘when we speak of a gentleman…we do not mean either a good man, or a wise man, but a man socially pleasant’ (qtd in Tosh 2002, 459). Whereas at the Thorntons’ dinner party, when Margaret tires of the ladies’ trivial conversation, she can enjoy listening to the men’s discussion of serious concerns, in her Southern home, she is met with the ‘trivial conversation’ (NS, 30) of her father and Lennox. Gaskell explicitly juxtaposes Lennox’s and Thornton’s different styles of conversations: ‘I must stop Colthurst’, said Henry Lennox, hastily. And by an abrupt, yet apropos question, he turned the current of the conversation, so as not to give Mr Thornton the mortification of acknowledging his want of success and consequent change of position. But as soon as the newly-started subject had come to a close, Mr Thornton resumed the conversation just where it had been interrupted, and gave Mr Colthurst the reply to his inquiry. (390)

Lennox, ever the gentleman, seeks to avoid social awkwardness, whereas Thornton, ever the man, seeks honesty and directness. Here, Lennox embodies Cardinal Newman’s gentleman: It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain. [He is] occupied in merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrassed action of those about him…The true gentleman… carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast;—all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling… (Newman 1999, 189)

In contrast, Thornton exemplifies the new ideal of manliness, as John Tosh explains: One other attribute was critically important in distinguishing manliness from gentlemanliness: frank straightforwardness, not only in action (about which there could be no disagreement in principle), but also in speech. The touchstone of polite conversation was the anticipated impression made on the listener. The manly man was someone who paid more attention to the

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prompting of his inner self than to the dictates of social expectation. Manly speech was therefore direct, honest, and succinct. Its purpose was not to please, or to shield listeners from the disagreeable, but to convey meaning without equivocation. The result might not be ‘socially pleasant’. It came from the heart, unbridled by fear of reprisal or ridicule. (Tosh 2002, 460)

Thornton’s frank manliness is made more prominent through contrast with Lennox’s polite gentlemanliness. As the narrative’s geographic shift from the South to the North mirrors the historical British change of industrial power over rural dominance, Margaret’s shift in suitors mirrors the changing social classes and the rising importance of the industrial man. Ultimately, Lennox has no space in the text as a potential model of masculinity: he is cast aside as a romantic interest and removes himself from the ‘business’ meeting in the last scene. Likewise, Margaret’s brother Frederick is dispelled from the text, exiled in Spain. Frederick has been read as a mere plot device—a reason for Margaret to be seen compromisingly late at night with another man by Thornton—and as wish fulfilment for Gaskell with regard to her lost brother (Hyde 1995, 21–25). However, Frederick serves to stand as a distinct model of masculinity—as an Englishman outside England, as a ‘chevalier turned merchant’ in contrast to Thornton’s rise in status— and as another example in Gaskell’s pattern of men who resist authority and who show emotion. Like Lennox, he is ‘delicately careful not to hurt or wound any of their feelings’, just as a gentleman ‘should’ be in social circles (NS, 248). Unlike Lennox, however, Frederick is openly emotional, and his ‘patient devotion and watchfulness’ make him ‘an admirable nurse’ (248). Further, he allows space for emotion in others: Margaret does not allow herself to cry until her ‘one precious brother’ arrives (245); her heart becomes ‘wonderfully lighter’ (244) as she feels ‘all the coming relief which his presence would bring’ as they sit with their ‘hands touching’ (246). When he is with his dying mother, ‘[s]he sat with his hand in hers; she would not part with it even while she slept; and Margaret had to feed him like a baby, rather than that he should disturb her mother by removing a finger’, and he ‘kissed the feeble hand that imprisoned his’ (248). These gestures to Frederick’s hands emphasise the sensitive and sympathetic bond he shares with his sister and mother and mark Frederick as an emotionally invested, sensitive, understanding man willing to be ‘imprisoned’ by his mother’s grasp and to relieve his sister of pain.

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Though largely positive, his ‘stormy’ (130) passion is also stressed, and he is shown to have deep and changeable emotions: He had delicate features, redeemed from effeminacy by the swarthiness of his complexion, and his quick intensity of expression. His eyes were generally merry-looking, but at times they and his mouth so suddenly changed, and gave her such an idea of latent passion, that it almost made her afraid. But this look was only for an instant; and had in it no doggedness, no vindictiveness; it was rather the instantaneous ferocity of expression that comes over the countenances of all natives of wild or southern countries— a ferocity which enhances the charm of the childlike softness into which such a look may melt away. Margaret might fear the violence of the impulsive nature thus occasionally betrayed, but there was nothing in it to make her distrust, or recoil in the least, from the new-found brother. (247–248)

While Gaskell uses the ferocity of the working class to link them to wolves, she dissociates Frederick from Englishness, linking his ferocity to other nationalities. Whereas Gaskell frequently links labouring males to nurturing maternal figures, she specifically comments that Frederick is not effeminate. His delicacy is ‘redeemed’, saved by his swarthiness; his darkness is a sign of his difference from the stereotypical English ‘pale ivory… complexion’ (62). Margaret notices, ‘her brother’s face was unusually dark in complexion, and she caught the stealthy look of a pair of remarkably long-cut blue eyes’ (244). This concentration on his darkness—and on darkness coupled with stealth—is matched by swarthiness coupled with ferocity, implying Gaskell’s sense of unease about his difference. Though this difference could be taken as a sign of dangerous ‘Otherness’, Gaskell makes it clear that his similarity to ‘natives of wild or southern countries’ keeps his passion, intensity, and ferocity from seeming threatening and lends him charm instead. Although Gaskell otherwise attributes impulsiveness, violence, ferocity, and childlikeness to the working class, she justifies Frederick’s volatility with his having lived in Spain and having assimilated to the point of acquiring Spanish characteristics. Though there is a slight unease related to his difference, this discomfort is lessened by the fact that it does not largely affect England, whereas the agitation related to the working class is a clear national threat and fear. Though Frederick evinces emotion unthreateningly—unlike the working-class men’s volatile emotion—Gaskell’s use of ‘childlike’ and ‘like a baby’ places him in a similar category. To become a man, Gaskell implies, one needs a degree of self-control and self-mastery, as Sussman

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and Tosh compellingly argue. When Gaskell writes of Thornton as ‘large and strong and tender and yet a master’ (Letters , 321), a ‘good’ character whom she fears ‘marring’, she reveals her qualifications for a ‘good’ man. Frederick is both strong and tender—his ‘strong arms’ lift his mother ‘tenderly up’ (NS, 250)—but he weakens, becoming ‘broken down’ and crying ‘violently’ (250) after his mother’s death, and he is ‘ashamed’ of ‘having been so battered down by emotion…though his sorrow…was a deep real feeling’ (261). Ruskin declares, ‘though rightness of moral conduct is ultimately the great purifier of race, the sign of nobleness is not in this rightness of moral conduct, but in sensitiveness. When the make of the creature is fine, its temptations are strong, as well as its perceptions; it is liable to all kinds of impressions from without in their most violent form’ (Ruskin 1905, 346). This Victorian ideal of nobility in sensitivity is key, for emotion at that time was not seen to emasculate men as some readers—and some characters—may believe. In contrast, Thornton is not ashamed of his feelings, declaring, ‘I am a man. I claim the right of expressing my feelings’ (NS, 195). Frederick’s un-Englishness in everything from skin tone to religion (Catholicism), combined with his inability to control his emotions, make him unable to be assimilated into an English mode of masculinity. By the end of the novel, he declares a ‘renunciation of England as his country’ and a desire to ‘unnative himself’ (343). Although Margaret interprets these sentiments as disappointment at his crushed hopes, it is nevertheless telling that Gaskell expels him, too, from the space of her text, banishing him to Spain, never to be absorbed back into English culture and never absolved for his mutiny. Lennox and Frederick are not the only models of gentlemanliness thrust from the space of the text. Gaskell establishes a pattern of removing men: Margaret’s father, Mr Hale, dies, followed shortly thereafter by his friend, Mr Bell. At the novel’s start, Mr Hale appears to be the perfect Southern gentleman, ‘a complete gentleman in his rather threadbare coat’ (26), and throughout the text, Gaskell uses him to represent a gentility of deep emotion and the gentlemanly manner of treating inferiors as equals. However, he fails as a father and as a husband, allows his feelings to overwhelm him, and is out of touch with the needs of a modern industrial society. He is a ‘nervous’ figure who is ‘distressingly perplexed’ (55) and who must be taken care of by his daughter, who has to break the news of his crisis of conscience and the resulting move to the North to her mother. He represents the traditional ‘gentleman’s’ classical education, which is initially imbued with value, as Margaret shows disdain for industrialists:

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‘What in the world do manufacturers want with the classics, or literature, or the accomplishments of a gentleman?’ (39). However, Bodenheimer argues that Thornton’s ‘crucial shift in the novel’ is his switch in tutors, ‘leaving Mr Hale’s classical tradition aside in favour of the keen social intelligence of his workman Nicholas Higgins’ (Bodenheimer 1988, 289), thus emphasising that the value of his educated gentlemanliness is seen as outmoded. What is more, though Thornton may initially seek his instruction, Hale’s knowledge is out of touch with the working class, as when he lectures at a Lyceum: ‘He had chosen Ecclesiastical Architecture as his subject, rather more in accordance with his own taste and knowledge than as falling in with the character of the place or the desire for particular kinds of information among those to whom he was to lecture’ (NS, 129). Though a gentleman, Hale is not respected by many Milton figures, including his landlord and Mrs Thornton. By the end of the novel, the iconic old-fashioned gentleman is rendered obsolete, with no resolution possible in the industrial city where he holds no influence. Having overturned his family’s domestic happiness and willingly fallen in economic and social power, he is left to die in Oxford, removed from the North, from life, and from the text itself. Though Gaskell’s remaining emblem of ‘traditional’ gentlemanliness, Mr Bell, remains wealthy and strong and does not have his gentlemanliness interrogated, he likewise dies and is removed from the text, not belonging in the future Milton that Gaskell envisions. In the last scene, ‘No one ever knew why Mr Lennox did not keep to his appointment’ (434), Frederick is permanently exiled in Spain, and Mr Hale and Mr Bell have died; the penultimate sentence, ‘That man!’ (436) sets the focus on Thornton, shifting the narrative emphasis from the Southern gentleman to the Northern man. Just as Thornton’s earlier conversation with Margaret underscores the significance of the man over the gentleman, the novel ends with an emphasis on the man, both linguistically and focally, with Gaskell having continually banished those models of traditional gentlemen from the novel’s conclusion.

Manliness, Gentlemanliness, and Individuality Though Gaskell can be (rightly) criticised for evading institutional concerns, her focus on hands—sexualised hands, handshakes, ‘the hands’—suggests that she is ultimately most invested in the individual: individual romance, individual exchanges, and individual sympathy. One must remember that she wanted to title the novel Margaret Hale,

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emphasising the individual, and that it was Dickens who encouraged a broader title. In focusing on individuals, Gaskell examines individuality, particularly as it relates to masculinity. Though many, such as the Hales’ landlord, reduce Thornton to his status as ‘the wealthy manufacturer’ (65), Gaskell is careful to resist associating all wealthy manufacturers with him. When Gaskell writes, ‘I want to keep his character consistent with itself, and large and strong and tender, and yet a master. That’s my next puzzle.’ (Letters , 321), she makes it clear that, in reconciling what appear to be two separate identities—that of a large, strong, tender man and that of a master—she focuses on the individual industrialist rather than industrialists as a group. Within the same letter, Gaskell mentions ‘the individual’ repeatedly: She says F[lorence Nightingale] does not care for individuals —(which is curiously true)—but for the whole race as being God’s creatures…Bunsen, who suggested something like this—that among the Japanese races individuals had no so much influence as among the Shemetic. Mr Nightingale said that that was a finer state of society when individuals were not so much ahead of those about them. (Letters , 317–318; emphasis Gaskell’s)

Although many aspects of her novel beg for an allegorical reading—for the domestic union between Margaret and Thornton to be read as the union of North and South—Gaskell nevertheless insists on the fact that Thornton is an individual; she separates him from the speculating mill owners and those who allow ‘fluff’, and she directly emphasises his difference, having Mr Hale declare of Thornton and Mr Bell: ‘You are neither of you representative men; you are each of you too individual for that’ (NS, 333). This individual identity is key to understanding the distinction made between men and gentlemen and to understanding the near-gothic elements of Thornton’s character. Gaskell presents many varying conceptions of the ‘gentleman’, showing that there were multiple definitions of the word rather than one definitive ‘gentleman’. Curiously, the industrialists at the Thorntons’ dinner party are described as ‘the rest of the gentlemen—all Milton men,—’ (162); the first clause seems to use the word ‘gentleman’ emptied of content (as in the vague ‘ladies and gentlemen’) whereas the dash provides a pointed intrusion, drawing a distinction between men and gentlemen. Gaskell shows that while Margaret may refer to the group as gentlemen, when her attention switches to Thornton as an individual, she carefully avoids the

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use of ‘gentleman’—instead referring to him as a host, a master, an entertainer—though she uses an array of descriptors that beg to be attached to ‘gentleman’—dignified, powerful, respected, fine, grand: Margaret’s attention was thus called to her host; his whole manner as master of the house, and entertainer of his friends, was so straightforward, yet simple and modest, as to be thoroughly dignified…[A]mong his fellows, there was no uncertainty as to his position. He was regarded by them as a man of great force of character; of power in many ways. There was no need to struggle for their respect. He had it, and he knew it; and the security of this gave a fine grand quietness to his voice and ways, which Margaret had missed before. (162–163)

Without specifically naming him a gentleman, Margaret describes him in traditionally, stereotypically ‘gentlemanly’ terms and notes that she had not perceived these traits earlier. In contrast with the description of the men, en masse, as gentlemen, Margaret then discusses with Thornton the fact that, due to his views on the strike, Mr Morison ‘cannot be a gentleman—is he?’ (164). Their conversation veers into one of the pivotal points in the novel: the distinction between the ‘true man’ and the ‘gentleman’: ‘I differ from you. A man is to me a higher and a completer being than a gentleman.’ ‘What do you mean?’ asked Margaret. ‘We must understand the words differently.’ ‘I take it that “gentleman” is a term that only describes a person in his relation to others; but when we speak of him as “a man,” we consider him not merely with regard to his fellow-men, but in relation to himself,— to life—to time—to eternity. A cast-away lonely as Robinson Crusoe—a prisoner immured in a dungeon for life—nay, even a saint in Patmos, has his endurance, his strength, his faith, best described by being spoken of as “a man.” I am rather weary of this word “gentlemanly,” which seems to me to be often inappropriately used, and often, too, with such exaggerated distortion of meaning, while the full simplicity of the noun “man,” and the adjective “manly” are unacknowledged—that I am induced to class it with the cant of the day.’ (164)

Just as Jem sees Mary Barton as a lady ‘in movement, grace, and spirit’ (MB, 162), to Thornton a ‘man’ relates to endurance, strength, and faith. Jem views Mary as ‘a lady by nature’ (162), defined from within

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and not by society’s rules; Thornton sees ‘man’ as defined from within rather than by societal relations. The major contrast here is, of course, the fact that Thornton questions the exaltation of the ‘gentleman’ and praises the ‘man’, while Jem does not appear to interrogate the labels. As Chris Louttit notes, whereas Mary Barton presents ‘examples of “exemplary”—or decadent—masculine behaviour’, the ‘dialogic spirit’ of North and South ‘introduces manliness as a topic that is debated in more abstract terms’ (Louttit 2015, 40). For Thornton, gentlemen—and, by probable extension, ladies—are defined by one’s relation with others, whereas men—and, conceivably, women—are valued by their individual merits and faults. By rejecting the exaggeration and elevation of the term ‘gentleman’, Thornton insists on the fact that people should be evaluated and judged individually and that the hierarchy of labels should be dismantled. The distinction Thornton makes between a man and a gentleman does not elevate the gentleman with respect to higher occupation, birth, or morals but rather elevates the man with regard to his individual identity rather than his identity within a group. Thornton turns to figures who are isolated—castaways, prisoners, hermit saints—and whose characterisation is unchanged by fluctuating definitions of social class but who are instead judged as individuals. This conceptualisation of a ‘man’ pertains to all men rather than men of a certain background, education, or social standing. Since Thornton views himself first and foremost as a man, there is no inherent divide between Higgins and him; without the bias of gentleman to man, there is room for more egalitarian communication. Through this exchange, Gaskell is able to give voice to her conceptualisation of masculinity in a more subtle way than in Mary Barton. As Bakhtin explains, ‘[h]eteroglossia…is another’s speech in another’s language, serving to express authorial intentions but in a refracted way. Such speech constitutes a special type of double-voiced discourse. It serves two speakers at the same time and expresses simultaneously two different intentions: the direct intention of the character who is speaking, and the refracted intention of the author’ (Bakhtin 1981, 324). By using dialogue rather than her earlier asides to the ‘you’ of the reader in her first novel, Gaskell is able to show Thornton asserting his masculinity by moving across what Bakhtin deems the ‘boundaries of speech types’ (308), drawing on literary allusions, religious language, and contemporary idiom to deliver a nuanced approach to masculinity. Significantly, he emphasises traits such as strength, faith, and endurance, which carry weight across class boundaries and which helped him to attain his status.

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Thornton’s language does not imply that he elevates a new model of manliness that has emerged in this industrial era; rather, he seems to attach himself to an old idea that has been lost sight of and is quasi-religious in its emphasis on hermit saints and eternity. Barbara Harman suggests that it is ‘not surprising that Gaskell cuts the conversation off in the middle’, for neither is prepared to resolve the issues of whether Margaret’s ‘terminology of class [can] be abandoned’ and whether the ‘language of stark individuality [must] displace all languages of community’ (Harman 1998, 60). Significantly, Thornton is called away from the conversation as Horsfall inquires if Margaret is a ‘Milton lady?’ (NS, 165); Thornton replies, ‘No! from the south of England—Hampshire’ (165). As Harman remarks, Thornton is answering directly the question he has been asked (about Margaret’s place of origin) but it does not occur to him to engage with Horsfall in a debate about the appropriateness of his interlocutor’s language, a debate about whether Margaret is a lady…or a woman ‘in relation to…life, to time,—to eternity’. (Harman 1998, 60)

Whereas Horsfall’s account of Morison’s gentlemanliness prompts Margaret and Thornton’s debate, his inquiry does not prompt a similar one; perhaps Gaskell suggests that Margaret’s status is not as contentious, or perhaps there is more at stake for a man’s status as a gentleman or as an individual man. Thornton’s emphasis on the individual is key, for, as Raffaella Antinucci makes clear, Victorian ‘writers and thinkers such as Carlyle, Ruskin, and Arnold variously reassert the primacy of individuality and originality as values to oppose a standardized and standardizing society’ and John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (1859) promotes ‘the emergence of a new image of masculinity hinging on virtue and inner worth’ (Antinucci 2010, 134). Valerie Wainwright, in writing of Gaskell’s emphasis on ‘the notion of a vibrant individuality’ (Wainwright 2007, 87), aligns Gaskell with John Stuart Mill as well as the Unitarian preacher William Maccall. Maccall establishes important claims for individuality—‘I believe that my Mission is to develope [sic] my Individuality as an Individual’—and links the development of individuality to tolerance (Maccall 1847, 4–5). Likewise, Catherine Hall points out that the ‘concept of the individual’ was changing, and individuality was at the core of Victorian masculinity: ‘[a] man’s individuality, his male identity, was closely tied to independence’

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(Hall 1992, 257). Both Mill and Carlyle, she writes, ‘had a profound belief in the centrality of individual action and individual responsibility [and] had a deeply rooted sense of themselves as individual subjects, active in the world and able to act on others’ (286–287). The individual aligns with Thornton’s distinction between the gentleman and the man; in other words, manliness aligns with individuality. Though Samuel Smiles’s Self -Help came out in 1859—and Gaskell can be assumed to have read it in 1860, based on the Portico Library’s borrowing records (Healy 2017, A72)—Gaskell seems to respond to some of the same cultural issues. Smiles writes that individuals ‘depend mainly upon themselves—upon their own diligent self-culture, selfdiscipline, and self-control—and above all, on that honest and upright performance of individual duty, which is the glory of manly character’ (Smiles 2002, 7). Thornton’s emphasis on endurance, strength, and faith is echoed in Smiles: ‘Truthfulness, integrity, and goodness…form the essence of manly character…He who possesses these qualities, united with strength of purpose, carries with him a power which is irresistible. He is strong to do good, strong to resist evil, and strong to bear up under difficulty and misfortune’ (316). John Tosh explains that whereas in the eighteenth century, sociability and restrained, respectable conversation were vital, solitary selfimprovement was key for the Victorians, for whom ‘individualism counted for more than sociability’ (Tosh 2007, 90). This consideration had significant implications: Manliness upheld the work ethic; gentlemanliness had a distinctly ambivalent relationship with it…manliness represented the quintessence of individualism. This is something of a paradox. In one sense Victorian manliness was no different from other models of masculinity in requiring the young male to conform to the expectations of the peer group by adjusting his behaviour and self-image to the approved model of manhood. But in commercial and professional society individualism was the approved model. (Tosh 2007, 93)

There is, perhaps, a distinction to be made between individualism of character and individualism of economic effort. Thornton seems to focus on character in making the distinction of man as an individual because he separates it from an image of social conformity related to the gentleman. To Thornton, and to others, individuality is eminently positive. That said,

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central to the discussion of the individual is Herbert Sussman’s emphasis on ‘consider[ing] male identity within the individual not as a stable achievement but as an unstable equilibrium so that the governing terms of Victorian manhood become contradiction, conflict, anxiety’ (Sussman 1995, 14–15). While Thornton insists on the importance of a man’s individual identity, it is this notion of Thornton as an individual that so troubles Margaret. She tells Thornton, ‘I am trying to reconcile your admiration of despotism with your respect for other men’s independence of character’ (NS, 124) and later muses on ‘his pitying eyes’ and ‘grave tremulous voice’, wondering, ‘How reconcile those eyes, that voice, with the hardreasoning, dry, merciless way in which he laid down axioms of trade, and serenely followed them out to their full consequences? The discord jarred upon her inexpressibly’ (153). Sarah Wootton writes, ‘Despite such attempts to reconcile Thornton’s character, he remains a repository of conflicting, and ultimately irreconcilable, impulses…He is necessarily at the forefront of debates about masculinity, but even more importantly, he functions as an embodiment of the ideological indeterminacy, the stubborn contradictions, that exemplify this novel’ (Wootton 2008, 30). This duality—of Thornton as a merciless mill owner and as a man of deep fellow feeling—confuses Margaret. In hearing Thornton speak of ‘sound economical principles’ to show that ‘there must always be a waxing and waning of commercial prosperity; and that in the waning a certain number of masters, as well as of men, must go down into ruin’, she wonders how he can see the process as ‘so entirely logical’ that neither masters nor men had right to complain of their tragic fate. In fact, ‘Margaret’s whole soul rose up against him while he reasoned in this way—as if commerce were everything and humanity nothing’ and ‘[s]he could hardly thank him for the individual kindness, [of offering] every convenience for [her mother’s] illness’ (NS, 152–153). Her bafflement of his individual kindness in contrast to his broader, almost Darwinian, views on the commercial world’s rises and falls emphasises, in particular, the fact that he does not sympathise with the workers as individuals. She cannot view him as a husband—or a financial investment—until he has learned to see the workers as men, rather than as hands, and as individuals, rather than en masse. In order for Gaskell to create the idealised union at the end of her novel, Thornton learns to view the ‘hands’ not only as individuals, but also as men according to his own definition. As Chris Louttit points out,

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‘[w]hat is most striking about Thornton’s categorisation of himself as a “man” is that it aligns him with the novel’s working men’, and as he sets up a dining-hall, ‘the boundaries between the classes begin to disappear… on both sides of the divide’ (Louttit 2015, 41). As Thornton gets to know the workers, Higgins grows to understand Thornton, declaring: He’s two chaps. One chap I knowed of old as were measter all o’er. T’other chap hasn’t an ounce of measter’s flesh about him. How them two chaps is bound up in one body, is a craddy for me to find out. I’ll not be beat by it, though. Meanwhile he comes here pretty often; that’s how I know the chap that’s a man, not a measter. (NS, 339)

As Louttit makes clear, as both Higgins and Thornton are seen as men, this ‘humane recognition…leads to a dissolving of the old models of masculinity, and the evolution of a new, dynamic and seemingly classless form of manliness’ (Louttit 2015, 41). Higgins’s comment demonstrates not only the changing relationship between master and men but also the difficulty in understanding Thornton’s ‘doubled’ character, with which Margaret struggles. By helping him become sympathetic to his workers, she is able to help reconcile his doubleness as she perceives it, between the ruthless mill owner and the man of deep fellow feeling, yet there is another doubleness to his character that Gaskell addresses. Many descriptions of Thornton emphasise his strength of character. Gaskell stresses his ‘resolution and power’ (NS, 64) and the fact that he, and other Milton men, display an ‘exultation in power’ (220). Although he lacks ‘grace’ and ‘refinement’ (63) and sees himself as a ‘great rough fellow’ (63), this roughness is linked to his power; Higgins describes him as a ‘bulldog on hind legs [dressed] in coat and breeches’, unlike the other ‘slippery’ manufacturers: …let John Thornton get hold on a notion, and he’ll stick to it like a bulldog; yo’ might pull him away wi’ a pitch-fork ere he’d leave go… Thornton’s as dour as a door-nail; an obstinate chap…th’ oud bulldog! (135)

This strong resolution of character and honesty, to the point of rough, bulldog obstinacy gives the impression of a definite, unified force. That said, Gaskell also uses near-gothic discourses of haunting and of possession to examine Thornton’s emotional, divided self.

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Whereas Gaskell emphasises Margaret’s maternal instincts that align with what could be considered a ‘natural’ femininity, she also shows that men can have a maternal side. For instance, Thornton has maternal feelings towards Margaret after her mother’s death: Mr. Thornton would rather have heard that she was suffering the natural sorrow. [T]here was selfishness enough in him to have taken pleasure in the idea that his great love might come into comfort and console her; much the same kind of strange passionate pleasure which comes stinging through a mother’s heart, when her drooping infant nestles close to her, and is dependent upon her for everything. (269)

His tenderness and desire to provide comfort is simultaneously sexual— passionate, stinging pleasure—and maternal. Though an urge for dependence could be perceived as domineering, by linking it to the maternal, Gaskell diminishes its danger and heightens the tender side of his desire. Thornton’s maternal longing, depicted in terms of delicious indulgence, is affected by his feelings of haunting: But this delicious vision of what might have been…was miserably disturbed by the recollection of what he had seen near the Outwood station. ‘Miserably disturbed!’ that is not strong enough. He was haunted by the remembrance of the handsome young man, with whom she stood in an attitude of such familiar confidence; and the remembrance shot through him like an agony, till it made him clench his hands tight in order to subdue the pain…It took a great moral effort to galvanise his trust—erewhile so perfect—in Margaret’s pure and exquisite maidenliness, into life; as soon as the effort ceased, his trust dropped down dead and powerless: and all sorts of wild fancies chased each other like dreams through his mind. Here was a little piece of miserable, gnawing confirmation. ‘She bore up better than likely’ under this grief. She had then some hope to look to…Even in her mourning she would rest with a peaceful faith upon his sympathy. His sympathy! Whose? That other man’s. (269–270)

Gaskell draws attention to ‘haunted’ by revealing a process of self-editing, changing the initial word choice of ‘disturbed’ to highlight the strength of Thornton’s feeling and to bring in more hyperbolic gothic language to her industrial text. Following this ‘haunting’, she extends the rhetoric to include the trope of the overly idealised ‘pure and exquisite maide[n]’ and dramatises his trust as dropping ‘dead and powerless’. This haunting takes

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possession of him violently, shooting through him in a supremely physical manner, and he must repress this passion of ‘pain’ and ‘agony’ through similarly corporeal means. Significantly, the haunting writes itself on his hands, which Gaskell has already imbued for the readers with notions of self-control and masculinity. As Sussman and Tosh suggest, Thornton’s struggle to control his sexual feelings is a struggle to contain his manliness and manage it towards productive ends. Gaskell reveals how the haunting also takes an internal effect, creating a psychological splitting, visualised by his worry fracturing into fancies chasing each other. These fancies are not dreams themselves but are like dreams in that they represent the subconscious taking control of his repressed feelings. The vision of these chasing dreams emphasises this internal state of conflict, which is central to the narrative surrounding Thornton’s masculinity and struggle for selfcontrol; it will reveal itself more explicitly when Thornton’s repression leads to uncanny doubling in dreams. Equally important is the weight given to the image of this dead trust; lifelessness within something living is unsettling and uncanny, and the fact that it is not just dead but powerless emphasises the change from the normally powerful Thornton. Jill Matus writes, ‘a varied artillery of metaphor and simile relating to haunting, fantasy, dream, pain and death capture[s] his agonised interior space…a great contrast to the usual Mr. Thornton [associated with] keen observation, sensual perceptiveness and emotional control’ (Matus 2009, 73). Further, after Thornton self-edits ‘disturbed’ to ‘haunted’, he becomes an analyst of language, interpreting Dixon’s phrase to mean that Margaret not only loves another but also finds sympathy with another; Gaskell emphasises the importance of sympathy through repetition and questioning. Just as Gaskell uses an almost gothic discourse of haunting to describe Thornton’s emotions, she also brings in gothic vocabulary in writing of Thornton’s ‘possession’: The moment he [spoke], he could have bitten his tongue out. What was he?…How evil he was to-night; possessed by ill-humour at being detained so long from her; irritated by the mention of some name, because he thought it belonged to a more successful lover; now ill-tempered…[H]e saw a sigh tremble over her body, as if she quivered in some unwonted chill. He felt as the mother would have done, in the midst of ‘her rocking it, and rating it,’ had she been called away before her slow confiding smile, implying perfect trust in mother’s love, had proved the renewing of its

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love. He gave short sharp answers; he was uneasy and cross… (NS, 335– 336)

In watching Margaret tremble, Thornton feels maternal and tender and also, as in the previous passage, almost chivalric in his humility. This sensitivity, however, makes him appear sharp and cross, suggesting that an inner gentleness is not always readily apparent and can even provoke displays of the opposite sentiment, echoing Gaskell’s earlier grappling with working-class masculinity and its simultaneous gentleness and violence. This language of possession, of being possessed and therefore causing evil, is striking, particularly as it is accompanied by the question of what he was; it is not who he was but what evil he was that torments him. Although the use of ‘ill-humour’ could be taken as synonymous for the ‘ill-tempered’ following it, it seems to suggest that something tangible has possessed him, as if one of the humours of blood, bile, and phlegm has taken control. This lack of control, tied as it is to a struggle to control his sexual jealousy, echoes Tosh’s argument about the Victorian fears surrounding the fragility of masculine sexual energy and Sussman’s point about Victorian bourgeois ‘manhood’ requiring ‘continued demanding self-discipline’ (Sussman 1995, 13). For Thornton’s masculinity to be rendered ‘safe’ to traditional middle-class gender norms, he will have to control his sexuality and channel it towards productive ends: towards marriage and, perhaps more importantly, towards a union that helps to link classes together more productively for business, social, and national progress as well. Significantly, both this passage and that referenced before juxtapose this language of possession and haunting with a language of Thornton’s maternal urges; in the previous passage, he desired that Margaret nestle against him, and here, he feels akin to a mother rocking her child. Gaskell’s quotation refers to Richard Edwards’s 1576 poem (Shuttleworth 2008, 448), and as Patricia Ingham points out, it ‘implies that inflicting pain by showing displeasure to the loved one is a calculated way of deriving pleasure from reconciliation’ and, by linking the pain Thornton inflicts to the mother’s chiding, ‘sexual and maternal pleasures are equated’ (Ingham 1996, 77). Ingham explores the ‘emotions of motherhood’ that move ‘away from the orthodoxy that derives maternal pleasure only from self-abnegation’ (77). Not only is Gaskell rewriting the script for acceptable motherly feelings, but she is also challenging the notion of maternity as a gendered concept. Thornton’s maternal

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impulses and desires emerge at moments of repression and possession, suggesting that these surges of emotion reveal a capacity for maternal care in any person, just as Gaskell had suggested with her nurturing workingclass fathers in Mary Barton. The use of gothic discourse to reveal this other internal side of Thornton, the unsettled, intensely feeling, uncontrollable side, as well as this deep maternal care, contrasts with Nancy Armstrong’s argument that ‘virtually every Victorian novel’ ‘incorporate[s] anti-individualistic elements of the gothic’ (Armstrong 2006, 22). For Gaskell, this internal gothic can be channelled to explore elements of masculinity that could be harnessed for her ultimate reconfiguration of the masculine individual, of shadowing this potential for deep feeling that Margaret must educate in order to form Thornton into an ideal master and man. Gaskell demonstrates that the gothic can be used to examine multiple layers of a man’s individuality and reveal elements within him that appear divided and chaotic. Although experiencing internal division, Thornton is not robbed of his individuality. Before proposing to Margaret the first time, he had experienced this division: …he was afraid of himself…He could not forget the touch of her arms around his neck, impatiently felt as it had been at the time; but now the recollection of her clinging defence of him, seemed to thrill him through and through,—to melt away every resolution, all power of self-control, as if it were wax before a fire. He dreaded lest he should go forwards to meet her, with his arms held out in mute entreaty that she would come and nestle there…His heart throbbed…Strong man as he was, he trembled at the anticipation of what he had to say, and how it might be received. She might droop, and flush, and flutter to his arms, as to her natural home and resting-place. (NS, 193)

Whereas later he desires to ‘nestle’ Margaret maternally, here, the desire is sexually charged, with Thornton’s body thrilling, throbbing, and trembling at the thought of physical contact. Though he is losing self-control, he is not unmanned; though trembling, he remains strong. Foster writes, ‘Obsessed with her physical presence, he tries to defuse the force of her challenging selfhood by mentally casting her into a submissively romantic role’ (Foster 1985, 150). His hopes of Margaret drooping and fluttering, however, do not come true, and he must go through a process of learning

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to see Margaret as an equal—and a useful equal—rather than only a sexually desirable but weakened woman. His understanding must be nuanced, but first, he experiences great emotional pain after he is rejected: When Mr. Thornton had left the house that morning he was almost blinded by his baffled passion. He was as dizzy as if Margaret, instead of looking, and speaking, and moving like a tender graceful woman, had been a sturdy fish-wife, and given him a sound blow with her fists. He had positive bodily pain,—a violent headache, and a throbbing intermittent pulse…It would have been a relief to him, if he could have sat down and cried…He said to himself, that he hated Margaret, but a wild, sharp sensation of love cleft his dull, thunderous feeling like lightning, even as he shaped the words expressive of hatred…She could not make him change. He loved her, and would love her; and defy her, and this miserable bodily pain. (NS, 207)

Although Gaskell does not here name the phenomena as possession, she could have, for the blinding passion takes control of Thornton’s body, leaving him dizzy and with corporeal, violent pain, and of his consciousness, for he is temporarily not himself, unable to remember the cause of his suffering. As Matus notes, ‘Gaskell represents intense emotional experience as undoing the equanimity and balance of the self [and] shows the destabilizing effects of strong emotion on identity and self-knowledge’ (Matus 2009, 74). This confusion and sense of being ‘cleft’ and divided does not last, however, for he then displays his bulldog-like obstinacy of refusing to change, and, within pages, he ‘felt his power and revelled in it’ (NS, 212). This strong sense of self prevents him from being enfeebled by emotion; his sentiment does not emasculate him, for ‘tears forc[e] themselves into his manly eyes’ (210). In fact, it is Thornton’s feeling that masters Margaret and makes her aware of his power: …he would love her. And she shrank and shuddered as under the fascination of some great power…She crept away, and hid from his idea… She disliked him the more for having mastered her inner will…The deep impression made by the interview, was like that of a horror in a dream; that will not leave the room although we waken up, and rub our eyes, and force a stiff rigid smile upon our lips. It is there—there, cowering and gibbering, with fixed ghastly eyes…And so she shuddered away from the threat of his enduring love…It was more daring than became a man to threaten her so. (197–198)

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Margaret had just seen ‘the gleam of washed tears’ in Thornton’s eye (196), which prompted feelings of kindness and self-reproach, followed by feelings of being threatened; the display of emotion does not un-man him but rather, in displaying the full weight of his love, makes him even more powerful. His ‘aggressive masculinity’ and the ‘association of sexual passion…with nightmare and terror’ suggests ‘possession, even annihilation’ (Foster 1985, 151). Thornton’s tears represent an unbounded emotion—literally overflowing—that is unnerving in its ability to affect Margaret’s emotion, to penetrate her consciousness. Though there is an element of horror, John Pikoulis points out, the ‘image of masculinity’ that Thornton offers ‘frightens her senses at the same time it secretly appeals to them’ (Pikoulis 1976, 184). The contrast between Thornton’s sense of power and strong identity and his troubled ‘cleft’ consciousness reveals itself as well in dreams: …he loved her sorely, in spite of himself. He dreamt of her; he dreamt she came dancing towards him with outspread arms, and with a lightness and gaiety which made him loathe her, even while it allured him. But the impression of this figure of Margaret—with all Margaret’s character taken out of it, as completely as if some evil spirit had got possession of her form—was so deeply stamped upon his imagination, that when he wakened he felt hardly able to separate the Una from the Duessa; and the dislike he had to the latter seemed to envelope and disfigure the former… To convince himself of his power of self-control, he lingered over every piece of business this afternoon; he forced every movement into unnatural slowness and deliberation…[Bell] consider[ed] Mr. Thornton about as brusque and curt a fellow as he had ever met with, and terribly gone off both in intelligence and manner. (NS, 331–332)

This dream is decidedly uncanny, for though Margaret’s figure is the same, she is possessed by evil. He is torn over whether to see her as Una, or Truth, or Duessa, the personification of falsehood in The Faerie Queene (1590). Shirley Foster argues that Margaret ‘becomes for him an image of disturbing duality’ and Thornton is ‘helpless in the face of this almost demonic female ambiguity’ (Foster 1985, 150). Foster’s reading is undoubtedly apt but could be further nuanced; Thornton, too, develops a duality that is disturbing. Jill Matus remarks that Gaskell uses the language of ‘gothic horror’ for ‘the nightmarish cast of interiority in moments of shock or distress’ (Matus 2009, 72–73). This focus on individual interiority is key, for one can see how these dreams of possession affect

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Thornton, making him curt and brusque. Whereas initially his roughness and frankness seemed tied to his stern ‘commercial’ side, at odds with his tender, feeling side, Gaskell here shows that his inner turmoil causes and provokes this gruff manner; the two are not irreconcilable sides but are, rather, deeply linked. Gaskell’s use of an ‘internal gothic’ thus shadows her project of the reconfiguration of masculine individuality; by using the gothic to explore Thornton’s desires, she reveals that manliness should not only be concerned with self-management and self-control but rather with channelling this capacity for deep feeling into productivity. Just as the terror of the ‘possessed’ mob needs to be maintained through middleclass sympathetic intervention and education, Thornton’s impulses and strong feelings can be controlled partially through Margaret’s intervention and education to help him become a better master and partially through his own ‘manly’ will of self-control. For Thornton’s impulses to be controlled, he must first realise that his jealousy is unfounded. Thornton’s troubled views of Margaret are linked to his jealousy of her brother Frederick, who he assumed was Margaret’s lover: He could not forget the fond and earnest look that had passed between her and some other man…he ground his teeth as he remembered it…this dark, slight, elegant, handsome man—while he himself was rough, and stern, and strongly made. He lashed himself into an agony of fierce jealousy. He thought of that look, that attitude!—how he would have laid his life at her feet for such tender glances, such fond detention! He mocked at himself, for having valued the mechanical way in which she had protected him from the fury of the mob; now he had seen how soft and bewitching she looked when with a man she really loved. He remembered…the sharpness of her words—‘There was not a man in all that crowd for whom she would not have done as much, far more readily than for him’. He shared with the mob, in her desire of averting bloodshed from them; but this man, this hidden lover, shared with nobody; he had looks, words, hand-cleavings, lies, concealment, all to himself. (NS, 309–310)

Firstly, he reacts not only emotionally but also bodily, grinding his teeth; secondly, the language verges on the hyperbolic—lashing, agony, fierce jealousy—showing his heightened emotional state. This emotion does not, however, unman him but rather emphasises his virile masculinity; he feels emotional due to a sense of competition, and he is stern and strong. He has considered Margaret’s interpretation of her actions at the

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riot and has changed his own reading of the scene to take into account her perspective, since now he identifies her actions as mechanical. This ability to change his perspective is key, for Gaskell insists on the importance of individual change and sympathetic understanding. He learns to nuance his reading of Margaret’s body and to identify with the mob itself. His focus on the fact that Frederick is dear enough to Margaret for her not only to involve herself in lies and concealment but also to give him hand-cleavings is significant, for it ties into Gaskell’s use of hands as a plot device: Thornton desires Margaret’s hands in a loving way, not a mechanical way. Once he realises—through his personal connection with Higgins, the connection for which Margaret had wished—that his jealousy is unfounded, he can appeal for her hand in marriage again. In his subsequent proposal, reference to the mob scene returns, as Gaskell presents a juxtaposition of parallels. Margaret again uses her hands to ‘veil her luminous eyes’ and the more ‘tremulous’ and ‘eager’ Thornton becomes, the ‘more closely hidden was the face’ (435). As with the earlier three offerings of a handshake, Thornton is successful in the third utterance of Margaret’s name: ‘At that third call she turned her face, still covered with her small white hands, towards him, and laid it on his shoulder, hiding it even there; and it was too delicious to feel her soft cheek against his, for him to wish to see either deep blushes or loving eyes’ (435). Unlike the handshake scene, this scene of tripling embodies a more traditional fairy tale as the romantic love is mutual. Margaret is no longer allowed to hide her emotion, neither in the moment nor in looking retrospectively at her motivations at the riot: After a minute or two, he gently disengaged her hands from her face, and laid her arms as they had once before been placed to protect him from the rioters. ‘Do you remember, love?’ he murmured. ‘And how I requited you with my insolence the next day?’ ‘I remember how wrongly I spoke to you,—that is all.’ (436)

Margaret’s arms here serve not as tools of protection but as symbols of her union with Thornton. She succumbs to her emotions and recognises that she had wrongly perceived her own subconsciousness, limiting herself to the realm of the functional and not acknowledging that although social justice made her urge Thornton to speak to the mob, emotion did play a role in driving her to protect Thornton. Her body’s movements thus

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connect the public and the private. Margaret’s arms are no longer a utilitarian shield from the rioters, nor are they ‘motionless by her sides…like some prisoner, falsely accused’ (193) during the first proposal. Gaskell presents marriage as a negotiation between these forms. Arms, hands, and women: none should be motionless and idle, nor should they be impersonal and cold; by linking the proposal to the mob scene, Gaskell makes it clear that social duty and personal connections are closely linked. Gaskell uses mirror images to present Margaret’s arms as performing a social service at the riot and then as performing a highly personal act in the final scene; in doing so, she conceives of marriage as means for a woman to alleviate class conflict by linking the idea of Margaret and Thornton’s union with the notion of Margaret as the means to Thornton’s treating his workers like men. The final proposal contrasts not only with the mob scene of violence but also with Thornton’s first proposal. When Thornton first proposes, he and Margaret negotiate their frustrations through their hands, as Thornton ‘held her hand tight in his…threw the hand away with indignation…[and] reject[ed] her offered hand’ (195). At the same time, they negotiate their understanding of masculinity and gentlemanliness: [Margaret:] ‘…you may come and thank me for it, instead of perceiving, as a gentleman would—yes! a gentleman,’ she repeated, in allusion to their former conversation about that word, ‘that any woman, worthy of the name of woman, would come forward to shield, with her reverenced helplessness, a man in danger from the violence of numbers.’ ‘And the gentleman thus rescued is forbidden the relief of thanks!” he broke in contemptuously. ‘I am a man. I claim the right of expressing my feelings.’ (195)

Here, Thornton and Margaret corroborate Bakhtin’s claims about language’s addressivity and the ways in which it can be imbued with intent, particularly when spoken to a specific listener; though Margaret still places value in ‘the gentleman’, her use of the term echoes and confirms Thornton’s claim that the gentleman is a category largely based on how one is perceived in relation to others. Both characters are aware of the weight of the other’s word choice, and just as they spar with hands proffered and rejected, they spar over the rhetorical weight of these categories of masculinity. By the second proposal, not only are gestures with

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their hands mutual, but both have also learned to nuance their understanding of masculinity, be it in terms of Thornton’s new views of the working class or Margaret’s of the gentleman. Were Margaret to marry Lennox, he would expect her to lose agency, whereas with Thornton, she gains it. In the final proposal, Thornton’s and Margaret’s hands are now mutually gentle; further, both Margaret and Thornton are presenting offers and willingly performing an exchange. Margaret has an inheritance; Thornton has Helstone roses: ‘“You must give them to me”, she said, trying to take them out of his hand with gentle violence. “Very well. Only you must pay me for them!”’ (436). Margaret thus appears to gain more agency with each proposal, and by the end of the novel, this negotiation of offering and refusing hands results in a union of hands and a marriage in which both husband and wife have agency. They reconcile marriage for romantic love with marriage as a transaction of goods; the exchange of marriage as payment for roses is a broader metaphor for the exchange that their marriage represents. Their union is neither entirely economical nor solely romantic. Margaret presents a business proposal, wherein she gives Thornton part of her inheritance in exchange for interest. In this sense, their marriage could be read as a monetary exchange. Although Margaret finds some usefulness—that for which she is ever seeking—in giving Thornton money, she is also able to find usefulness domestically. Margaret becomes neither dependent on Thornton nor an independent woman; instead, Gaskell presents a re-envisioning of marriage as an interdependent couple. It is necessary for Margaret to have established her own independence, monetarily and mentally, before performing her ‘natural’ social duty as mother and wife, so that Thornton will not be able to fulfil Mrs Thornton’s prophesy of his having ‘to keep a tight hand over [her], to make [her] know [her] place’ (317). Many critics focus on the power imbalance at the end of the novel (cf. David 1981, 39; Foster 1985, 150; Pryke 2005, 557). Though Gaskell could have portrayed a very one-sided relationship between the newly wealthy Margaret and the bankrupt Thornton, she emphasises instead the productive powers of union. The partnership seems all the more positive when one considers the significance of the fact that Gaskell did not allow Thornton to have a breakdown, as one possible inspiration for his character did. Many critics agree that the Greg family served as inspiration for Thornton, particularly due to Samuel Greg’s humanitarianism and

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William Rathone Greg’s business reverses (Sharps 1970, 231), as well as the letter in which Gaskell writes: Mr Sam Greg’s plans have been accompanied with great want of success in a money point of view. This has been a stinging grief to him, as he was most anxious to show that his benevolent theories, which were so beautiful in their origin, might be carried into effect with good and just practical results of benefit to both master and man…I think he, or such as he, might almost be made the hero of a fiction. (Letters , 120)

Though she had not yet started writing North and South, she already considers him worthy of being the hero of a fiction, though he was unsuccessful financially. Gaskell exhibits her interest in Greg: ‘He is now a great invalid of the most melancholy kind, for his illness is on his spirits; and it amused and interested me to find how in his sad solitary life he cheered himself by planning to emigrate to New Zealand’ (Further Letters , 48) and ‘Mr Greg looks much worse…They are talking of emigrating to New Zealand…Mr Greg is most anxious to do so’ (Letters , 178). Gaskell’s language of melancholia, invalidism, and anxiety to describe his ‘sad solitary’ life does not appear to diminish her respect for him, for she writes, ‘I think you would respect him even though he were mistaken; and I am sure you would be sorry for a life which has been a series of disappointments’ (Further Letters, 54). Whereas characters in Mary Barton may receive the ‘easy’ answer of emigration that Sam Greg sought, Gaskell is able to reimagine, in Thornton, a means for a humanitarian like Greg to thrive within Manchester; in doing so, however, Thornton depends on a sudden inheritance. Greg held ‘tea parties for the operatives’ and believed in ‘social harmony, both within and between classes’; that said, ‘his idealism had blinded him to the true interests of his employees’ and after his workers went on strike, Greg ‘felt that he had been betrayed and that his schemes were worthless…settled a nervous breakdown… and abandoned the mill’ (Rose 1986, 121). Though Greg’s tea parties and Thornton’s hot-pot meals are similar, Thornton’s dining scheme was intended to save money, whereas Mary Rose points out that Greg’s ‘schemes were useless without a profitable mill’ and that ‘his obsession with his social experiment led him to neglect the mill’ (121–122). Like Thornton, Greg faced a strike and subsequent bankruptcy; unlike Thornton, he ‘suffered a severe breakdown’, having trusted in

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‘old-fashioned paternalism…that was no longer in touch with reality’ (Oppenheim 1991, 180). His memoirist writes: There was much of the feminine element in his constitution. He rather lacked that harder, tougher fibre, both of mind and frame, which makes the battle of life so easy and so successful to many men. He had nothing hard about him, and was not made for conflict…He was tender-hearted to an unusual degree—perhaps because he knew so well what suffering was. (qtd in Oppenheim 1991, 181)

Sympathy could be seen as disabling: Greg is weak for having seen suffering. Oppenheim writes that his ‘compassionate, nurturing and motherly’ characteristics made him a man who ‘could not compete in the world’ (181). Gaskell’s interest, then, in creating a mill owner who was ‘large and strong and tender and yet a master’ (Letters , 321) seems to take this tender side of Sam Greg—his compassion, his sympathy for suffering, his interest in humanitarianism—and revive and remould it into a man who was also strong and a master. Though both men suffer from a strike and bankruptcy, and though both men show a capacity for tenderness—and a maternal streak—Thornton does not experience a breakdown, with its implications of a failure of ‘will’ or ‘self-control’ that could be construed as ‘unmanly’. Thornton may have experienced a financial failure, and many would see that failure as a failure of masculinity; nevertheless, by seeing the full scope of failure to which Gaskell could have subjected him, it becomes clear that she did not want Thornton to be perceived as a failure. Though he is bankrupt, he maintains a strong will. Further, unlike Sam Greg, he does not give up on his humanitarian schemes. Rather, he remains in contact with Higgins and supports Gaskell’s fundamental project of sympathy. Gaskell highlights the need for sympathy between classes by showing the problems that occur when sympathy and solidarity become confined to one class or group. Though the labourers’ union is depicted as ‘admirable [and] intelligently directed’, it ‘create[s] new class divisions with oppressive results within the labor force itself’ (Bodenheimer 1988, 61). Although some, like Higgins, have the resources to withstand a strike, others lack both economic and emotional resources, and these intra-class divisions lead to Boucher’s growing frustration, acts of violence, and suicide. Working-class solidarity is not necessarily a productive option, in Gaskell’s eyes; whereas the strike causes hardships for both

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labourers and manufacturers, inter-class sympathy leads to Thornton’s and Higgins’s collaboration for the mutually beneficial dining-hall scheme. If several labourers group together, there is neither synthesis nor progress.5 Likewise, the romantic union that Gaskell envisions is productive because it is a synthesis of two different parts: North and South. As such, Gaskell advocates sympathetic ties across class boundaries rather than a strengthening of solidarity within a class. Thus the handshake, and the union of classes in personal collaboration that it signifies, is key to understanding why a marriage between Thornton and Margaret is so positive for Gaskell; Thornton helps Margaret to nuance her understanding of the man and the gentleman, and she helps him to see the workers as humans and establish personal connections with them. Marriage cannot function as a distant objectification, as Thornton initially objectifies Margaret’s hands at tea; it must be as a handshake, a partnership, and a means to unite two classes through two individuals. Gaskell uses hands to unite industry and usefulness with desire and romance, to connect social duty and domesticity, and to join together classes and regions in sympathetic connection. Additionally, Gaskell manages to find a resolution for the type of sympathetic and productive masculinity that Thornton grows to represent both within the narrative and within Manchester—unlike her struggle with working-class masculinity in Mary Barton, as well as her struggle with the figure of the gentleman in Mr Hale, Mr Bell, Frederick, and Lennox. Further, by ending the novel with an attention to Margaret’s and Thornton’s hands, Gaskell makes it clear that the novel’s resolution is also a positive resolution for what Sussman would deem the ‘masculine plot’; Sussman writes, ‘For nineteenth-century men, manhood was conceived as an unstable equilibrium of barely controlled energy that may collapse back into the inchoate flood or fire that limns the innate energy of maleness, into the gender-specific mental pathology that the Victorian saw as male hysteria or male madness’ (Sussman 1995, 13). Not only does Gaskell ensure that Thornton’s business can succeed and thus distance Thornton from Greg’s nervous breakdown, but also she ensures that his sexual energy is far removed from male hysteria and is safely inscribed in a domestic tableau. Whereas the tea-drinking scene uses an attention to hands to showcase Thornton’s struggle for self-control, the engagement concluding the text comes full circle, using the connection of hands to reinscribe the issue of Thornton’s masculinity and self-control in a productive social, economic, and romantic resolution.

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Notes 1. Tosh writes, ‘Both Christian precept and the discourse of reason inherited from the Enlightenment declared that sexual passion should be controlled and rationed. Several leading writers of the period, notably Carlyle, Tennyson and Browning, expressed deep fears of the sexual energy within man and the consequent fragility of manhood itself’ (Tosh 2007, 46). 2. Sussman argues: ‘…the early Victorians defined maleness as the possession of an innate, distinctively male energy that…they did not represent as necessarily sexualized, but as an inchoate force that could be expressed in a variety of ways, only one of which is sexual…The point of problematization for manhood or what the Victorian middle-class termed “manliness” was situated in…properly regulating or managing this internal, natural energy, “technologies of the self” [that] were consistently identified with the technologies of an industrializing society obsessed with harnessing the natural energy of water and fire’ (Sussman 1995, 10–11). 3. Thornton’s defence of the term substantiates Mikhail Bakhtin’s claim that ‘there are no “neutral” words and forms—words and forms that can belong to “no one”’; Bakhtin continues: ‘All words have the ‘taste’ of a profession, a genre, a tendency, a party, a particular work, a particular person, a generation, an age group, the day and hour. Each word tastes of the context and contexts in which it has lived its socially charged life…The word in language is half someone else’s. It becomes “one’s own” only when the speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention’ (Bakhtin 1981, 293). Gaskell thus corroborates Bakhtin’s theory, showing that though Thornton can justify the use of the term ‘hands’ within the context of the local rhetoric, the terminology will carry more weight when Margaret and Thornton’s discussions add elements of intention and appropriation to it. 4. Bakhtin writes, ‘it is in this way…that various different points of view, conceptual horizons…various social “languages” come to interact with one another’ (282) and notes, ‘the word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language…but rather it exists in other people’s mouths, in other people’s contexts, serving other people’s intentions…Language is not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private property of the speaker’s intentions; it is populated—overpopulated—with the intentions of others’ (294). 5. Similarly, Frederick Hale’s plotline provides significant echoes, showing that both the Milton workers and the English sailors resist what they see as a tyrannical, unreasonable, arbitrary ruling power; neither those involved in the naval mutiny nor those involved in the strike are protected by the law,

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nor are they given the means to voice their concerns. As with the Milton workers, the only way for Frederick to be rehabilitated into English life is through connections with lawyers, not through solidarity with others in the navy. Though this plotline is complicated by Gaskell in a way that renders his heroism problematic, in this way, Gaskell moves definitively against what Marx stands for—the uniting of the proletariat—and promotes instead ties that move across classes, not within them.

CHAPTER 4

Intertextual Masculinities in The Scarlet Letter and Ruth

As a novel about a fallen woman, it is not surprising that Ruth (1853) is frequently compared to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850). Though there is no record of Hawthorne and Gaskell meeting, they shared many friends and Gaskell took an interest in his work; Shirley Foster writes, ‘[Gaskell] had certainly read The Scarlet Letter; a somewhat curious reference in a letter to Edward Chapman suggests that she had sent a copy of it to him for rebinding’ (Foster 2002, 137).1 Angus Easson notes that ‘direct imitation is unlikely’ between the texts (Easson 1979, 114), yet some similarities even outwith the depictions of adultery and illegitimate children seem to be so blatant as to have been deliberate, such as the name borrowing of ‘Bellingham’. Both ‘fallen’ women achieve some sort of redemption through their child and rehabilitation through nursing others (cf. Sana 1999, Ehrenpreis 1973). Further, both novels feature ‘a sexual fall, social hypocrisy and humiliation, and a woman’s struggle for autonomy’ (Uglow 1993, 310). Both heroines sew, and both women make discrepancies based on ‘purity’ in their sewing; Hester sews handiwork, though never for a bride (Hawthorne 2007, 66), and Ruth will not use expensive articles for herself but rather for her ‘little creature, for whom in its white purity of soul nothing could be too precious’ (RU , 131). Scholarship focuses on the women’s fate, noting that Hester significantly does not die (Bonaparte 1992, 128) and that readers wonder, ‘Why…couldn’t Ruth live the life of another penitent, Hester Prynne, on the outskirts of the community[?]’ (d’Albertis © The Author(s) 2020 M. Lowe, Masculinity in the Work of Elizabeth Gaskell, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48397-5_4

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1997, 98). Other similarities revolve around the novels’ depiction of illegitimate children as constant reminders of ‘sin’. Further, neither child is considered normal; Hester’s Pearl is deemed a ‘naughty elf’ (Hawthorne 2007, 86), a ‘wild and flighty little elf’ (91), an inhuman outcast, ‘imp of evil’ (74), and Ruth’s Leonard is ‘for ever in mischief’, with a ‘strange odd disregard of truth’ (RU , 165). Both women refuse to reveal the identity of their child’s father, despite pressure to do so. Both children are the key to the secret affair: Pearl ‘had been offered to the world, these seven past years, as the living hieroglyphic, in which was revealed the secret they so darkly sought to hide—all written in this symbol—all plainly manifest—had there been a prophet or magician skilled to read the character of flame!’ (Hawthorne 2007, 161). Similarly, Leonard is the un-deciphered key to Ruth’s secret; Jemima’s mother unwittingly notes the similarity: ‘Do you know, I thought you were going to say he [Bellingham/Donne] was like little Leonard’ (RU , 214). It is not altogether surprising that comparative scholarship has focused largely on the depiction of the women and children, for overall, Ruth has been categorised as a novel about the female experience; Winifred Gérin deems it ‘a study of Woman in Relation to Society—of Woman as a Victim of the existing Social Order’ (Gérin 1976, 126–127) and Jenny Uglow names it ‘a novel about confinement and repression in which the truth is buried, particularly the truth about women’s emotional history’ (Uglow 1993, 326). Thus labelled, Gaskell’s depiction of masculinity remains largely overlooked. By examining it alongside Hawthorne’s, it becomes evident that Gaskell is responding both to Hawthorne’s representation of fallen women and illegitimate children and to his depiction of manliness, echoing the models of masculinity he presents and mirroring them with significant differences. Overtly, Gaskell borrows the name of her seducer, Henry Bellingham, from Hawthorne’s Governor Bellingham, ‘a gentleman advanced in years, with a hard experience written in his wrinkles’ (Hawthorne 2007, 52). More subtly, she borrows and transforms Hawthorne’s ways of portraying masculinity. Like Hawthorne, she presents a weak-willed lover whose identity is kept secret and who falls ill, weakened and emasculated from his sexual act, and like Hawthorne, she depicts the man who learns of the affair as physically deformed and not ‘typically’ manly. In doing so, she uses the template of The Scarlet Letter not only to remove the figures of the fallen woman and illegitimate child from the framework of allegory to provide a nuanced

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depiction within the realm of realism but also to explore Hawthorne’s models of masculinity. In doing so, she challenges his representation of masculinity, particularly with regard to assertive sexual masculinity and feminised masculinity, as well as her society’s attitudes towards gender roles more broadly. By taking the established critical framework of comparing Hawthorne and Gaskell and shifting that critical focus to depictions of men, Gaskell’s understanding of masculinity—and of masculinity as a social construct—can be better understood. Both authors present some form of normative manhood that reacts to the fallen woman, and both show that this normative model is intolerant and mean-spirited. Hawthorne writes, ‘The truth was, that the little Puritans, being of the most intolerant brood that ever lived, had got a vague idea of something outlandish, unearthly, or at variance with ordinary fashions, in the mother and child; and therefore scorned them in their hearts, and not unfrequently [sic] reviled them with their tongues’ (Hawthorne 2007, 75). Whereas Hawthorne’s romance does not necessitate an individual figure of normative masculinity and thus offers the entire town as the model of conventionality, Gaskell, working in social realism, needs a normative masculine figure. She finds one by taking the Puritan community of The Scarlet Letter and condensing it into one man: Bradshaw, a wealthy manufacturer. In using an individual, she can reveal Bradshaw to be not merely intolerant but also an inadequate model of masculinity. Bradshaw is shown to be ‘so severe, so inflexible’ (RU , 102), ‘so severe a man—so unpitiful a judge’ (162); he lacks not only pity but also any attempt at understanding or sympathising with others: ‘The opinions were as good and excellent as the opinions of any man can be who sees one side of a case very strongly, and almost ignores the other’ (154). Further, Gaskell suggests that if Bradshaw knew of Ruth’s sin, he would act as Hawthorne’s community acted: ‘he would blazon out poor Ruth’s sin, and there would not be a chance for her left’ (162). When he hears of Ruth’s sin, his speech is ‘broken and disjointed by intense passion’ as he declares that he ‘hate[s] [and] utterly loathe[s]…wantonness’ and is ‘absolutely choked by his boiling indignation’ (273). His angers, his fears that his children will be contaminated by her, and his inflexible stance on morality mirror those of Hawthorne’s Puritan town. Though Gaskell uses the individuated Bradshaw rather than a figurative town, Bradshaw is not alone in his views: ‘members of [Benson’s] congregation…followed Mr Bradshaw’s lead’ (305). By using an individual representative of normative manhood, Gaskell can

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realistically show an individual’s change of conscience, as Bradshaw does following his son’s accident. In individuating the town, Gaskell reveals a model of masculinity that is inadequate, thus raising questions of what aspects of manliness should be nuanced and altered.

Weak-Willed Lovers Whereas The Scarlet Letter begins after Dimmesdale and Hester’s relationship and the birth of their illegitimate child, Gaskell illustrates the trajectory from Ruth’s seduction and ‘fall’ to her raising an illegitimate child and dying. This crucial difference allows Gaskell to move from the genre of Hawthorne’s romance to that of realism and to examine the interiority of a fallen woman from seduction to death. Likewise, whereas Hawthorne presents Dimmesdale as weak-willed, emaciated, and sexually unappealing from the beginning of the novel, Gaskell demonstrates the process by which the seductive, compelling, once-virile Bellingham falls ill and becomes weakly passive, emasculated, and debilitated by his sexuality. Though the weakening is similar, it is significant that whereas Dimmesdale is destroyed by this illicit sexual energy, Bellingham recovers from the weakness and returns to his former assertive, aggressive model of masculinity. Dimmesdale is first presented as a ‘pale young man’ with a mouth ‘apt to be tremulous, expressing both nervous sensibility and a vast power of self-restraint’ (Hawthorne 2007, 54). Repeatedly, Hawthorne makes reference to Dimmesdale’s feminine traits of trembling nervousness, whether he gives ‘an apprehensive, a startled, a half-frightened look’ (54), speaks with a ‘tremulously sweet’ voice (55), or has ‘his peculiarly nervous temperament…thrown into agitation’ (89). This quavering emotional state emasculates him, taking such a toll on his body that his ‘frame [is] so feeble’ that infirm elders believe he will die before them (112). Dimmesdale’s physical state is due to inner anguish caused by guilt for his sin and its resulting secret; his ‘character had been so enfeebled by suffering’ (151) and Hester remarks, ‘Thou art crushed under this seven years’ weight of misery’ (155). When he plans to leave his name and secret behind, he gains some ‘energy’ and ‘inspiration’ (195) and loses his ‘feebleness of step’ (186); even at this apex of hope, however, he remains weak and his face ‘seemed hardly the face of a man alive, with such a death-like hue: it was hardly a man with life in him, that tottered on his path so nervously’ (195). He is mentally ‘overwhelmed with shame’ (119)

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for his sin and physically feels ‘the gnawing and poisonous tooth of bodily pain’ (117); brought to ‘the verge of lunacy, if…not already…across it’ (130), he believes a ‘scarlet token’ (117) on his breast symbolises his transgression, though Hawthorne does not make it clear whether this ‘burning torture’ (199) is externally present. It is difficult to imagine such a weak, trembling man having once charmed Hester: ‘Although he had once attracted Hester, Dimmesdale is scarcely charming to the reader. His sexuality appears to ebb as his physical strength and moral vigor diminish’ (Johnson 1993, 604). Indeed, one hardly associates a ‘care-worn and emaciated’ man of ‘failing health’ (Hawthorne 2007, 89) with a seductive figure. One could argue, however, that his sexuality does not diminish simultaneously with his physical and moral health but rather that his sexuality and his sexual sin make him, ultimately, weaken into an unattractive, sexually unappealing man. In other words, his virility in turn creates his feeble, emasculated state. In both novels, whatever the man may have been before the seduction, he is weak afterwards, suggesting that manly strength and masculine identity are not necessarily complemented by sexuality. Dimmesdale’s and Bellingham’s destabilisations after their respective affairs reinforce Herbert Sussman’s argument that ‘the foundational of manliness…is the proper management of desire’ (Sussman 1995, 87). Sussman examines Victorian ideologies of ‘male sexual self-discipline’ (87), the need to ‘contain the powerful, potentially destructive force of male sexuality’ (148), and the ‘suppression of sexuality as the index of manliness’ (32). Likewise, both Dimmesdale and Bellingham resonate with John Tosh’s explanation of the contemporary ‘deep fears of the sexual energy within man’ (Tosh 2007, 46). Tosh argues, ‘In common usage manliness always presumed a liberal endowment of sexual energy [but] the Evangelicals aimed to destroy the sexual licence of the old physical manliness by anchoring masculine energies in the home’; he notes, ‘Sexual activity enhanced masculine status, but the complete transition to manhood depended on marriage…only marriage could yield the full privileges of masculinity’ (Tosh 2007, 112). Significantly, neither Dimmesdale nor Bellingham fulfils his sexual desire in the ‘conventional’ realm of marriage, thus suggesting their inability to maintain their sexuality; one could nuance Tosh’s claim, however, to argue that sexual activity did not necessarily enhance masculine status but could rather debilitate it if performed illicitly, outside the realms of convention.

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With regard to Dimmesdale’s emasculation and feminisation, T. Walter Herbert, Jr writes of ‘Hawthorne’s ambivalence toward Arthur [Dimmesdale]’s “feminine” traits and Hester’s “masculine” traits’, arguing that Hawthorne represents a ‘troubled conflict’ over ‘natural models of maleness and femaleness’, with a ‘guilty admiration for Hester’s “manfulness”’ and an ‘uneasy identification with Arthur’s languishing, introspective, and timorous nature’ (Herbert 1988, 291). One explanation for this marked difference—admiration for manly Hester and uneasiness about feminine Dimmesdale—is offered by Erika Kreger, who aligns Dimmesdale with ‘weak heroines’ of eighteenth-century seduction novels and Hester with ‘the strength [and] selflessness’ of the heroines of nineteenthcentury domestic novels (Kreger 1999, 310). She argues that, mentally and bodily, Dimmesdale compares to ‘the physically drooping, ethically weak, seduced heroine whom mid-century discussions of fiction taught audiences to disparage’ and argues that the result encourages readers to condemn rather than sympathise with Dimmesdale (311). Kreger notes Dimmesdale’s blood-drained cheeks and tremulous lips as ‘specific physical markings of the seduced heroine’ (320) and argues that ‘[l]ike the self-absorbed heroine whose exaggerated emotion leaves her vulnerable to a lustful man’s manipulations’, Dimmesdale is ‘cast in the role of the victimised girl at the mercy of the conscienceless seducer played by Chillingworth’ (323). Another example of Dimmesdale’s resemblance to the fallen heroine is that Hester declares that it would have been ‘better [Dimmesdale] had died at once’ (Hawthorne 2007, 134), just as in Ruth Faith Benson says it ‘would be better for her to die at once’ (RU , 92) and Ruth herself declares, ‘Oh, would to God I had died—that I had died as a baby’ (278). Kreger sees Dimmesdale’s eventual death as unsurprising, for, ‘[i]n accordance with the role reversal, it is the “fallen man” who crumbles and dies at the end of the novel’ (Kreger 1999, 335). Though Hawthorne is praised for diverging from contemporaries in presenting a ‘fallen woman’ who lives, he does still kill the feminised Dimmesdale; in other words, the female may not die, but the feminine does. Thus, though he challenges gender stereotypes, he does not altogether challenge narrative ones. Though Gaskell does not give Bellingham an equal sense of gnawing guilt for his sexual dalliance, like Dimmesdale, he falls ill after the sexual encounter: ‘his breathing became quick and oppressed…He seemed stupefied and shivery’ (RU , 62). Just as Dimmesdale’s ‘moral force was abased into more than childish weakness’ amidst his ‘morbid energy’

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(Hawthorne 2007, 125), it is Bellingham’s morbid conscience rather than a medical condition that enfeebles him: ‘If Mr. Bellingham did not get rapidly well, it was more owing to the morbid querulous fancy attendant on great weakness than from any unfavourable medical symptom’ (RU , 72). This morbidity in both men feminises them, as Gaskell writes of ‘a feminine morbidness of conscience’ (305) in Benson. Though Erika Kreger explains that it was more typical in contemporary novels for the heroine to feel weakened after a sexual affair, like Hawthorne, Gaskell presents a strong, healthy female alongside a man debilitated by his sexuality. Unlike Hester, however, Ruth still dies, after catching the fever with which Bellingham falls ill; it remains deliberately unclear whether the ‘fever’ pertains to the typhus that had been spreading or the remnants of sexual longing, a resurrected storminess of desire. Whereas Dimmesdale dies, fulfilling the trajectory of the death of the ‘fallen feminine’ if not the ‘fallen woman’, Bellingham recovers and reasserts his aggressive masculinity. Gaskell’s reversal of the gendered deaths reveals a significant challenge to her source material, suggesting that while she concurs about the debilitating potential of uncontrolled sexual energy on virile masculinity and likewise warns of the dangers— for both genders—of sexual liaisons outside the arena of marriage, she is unwilling to invest in a similar complete reversal of traditional gender norms. Writing in the realm of realism rather than allegory, Gaskell seems comfortable reflecting certain patterns of masculinity found in Hawthorne’s text but is only willing to follow the trajectory of weakening so far, unable to overturn what Sussman would deem ‘“normal” male heterosexuality—hearty, aggressive, dominating, predatory’ (Sussman 1995, 95). Bellingham’s recovery, paired with Ruth’s death, shows that Gaskell ultimately chooses to reflect the harshness of the double standard inherent in Victorian gender norms, as illicit sexuality is ultimately more damaging to the woman than the man. When one considers the trajectory of gendered deaths she could have mirrored, her divergence reveals a deeper challenge to prevailing gender norms: until this type of aggressive male sexuality can be curbed or dismantled, it will continue to reassert itself, with destructive effects. Though Gaskell appears conscious of the devastating ways in which predatory masculinity will eventually prevail and reassert itself, she does not vilify Bellingham. Unlike seducers such as Richardson’s Robert Lovelace or Hardy’s Alec d’Urberville, neither Henry Bellingham nor Arthur Dimmesdale is portrayed as an outright villain; instead, both are

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weak-willed, particularly when contrasted with their strong female lovers. For example, Bellingham saves a child and is transformed into a hero: His spirited and natural action of galloping into the water to save the child, was magnified by Ruth into the most heroic deed of daring; his interest about the boy was tender, thoughtful benevolence in her eyes, and his careless liberality of money was fine generosity; for she forgot that generosity implies some degree of self-denial. (RU , 24)

As Easson notes, he is ‘careless rather than vicious’ and has neither the ‘calculation’ nor the ‘intelligence’ of a ‘stage-managed act’ like Lovelace or Valmont (Easson 1979, 116). Likewise, Siv Jansson argues that, in witnessing a ‘conventional romantic image’ of a man on a horse ‘sweeping to the rescue’, Ruth is more deceived by her illusions than by Bellingham himself, for Ruth’s naïveté leads her to find it ‘inconceivable’ that a man capable of rescuing a child could be dishonourable, and it is this misapprehension that leads to her seduction, a ‘combination of innocent idealism and ignorant misunderstanding, not sexual predatoriness’ (Jansson 1996, 69). Just as Gaskell shows that Ruth’s seduction does not make her evil, Bellingham’s seducing and deserting do not make him evil, but rather ‘weak and spineless’ (69). W.A. Craik concurs, for though Ruth is left ‘most credibly destitute’, it is ‘no melodramatic or villainous desertion’ (Craik 1975, 51). Bellingham himself is not the one who chooses to desert Ruth; rather, he is too passive to oppose his mother’s sway. Though he attempts to defend Ruth and claim that he ‘led her wrong’ (RU , 73), Mrs Bellingham holds ‘the sort of dignified authority which retained a certain power over her son’ and ‘[h]e was too weak in body to oppose himself to her, and fight the ground inch by inch’ (73). The decision to desert Ruth makes him ‘uneasy’, but his whole role is one of passiveness: Anything to get rid of his uneasiness. He felt that he was not behaving as he should do, to Ruth, though the really right never entered his head. But it would extricate him from his present dilemma, and save him many lectures; he knew that his mother, always liberal where money was concerned, would ‘do the thing handsomely,’ and it would always be easy to write and give Ruth what explanation he felt inclined, in a day or two; so he consented, and soon lost some of his uneasiness in watching the bustle of the preparation for their departure. (75)

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Here, Bellingham does have some underlying conscience that tells him he is acting poorly—or rather, failing to act rightly, for Bellingham’s role in the desertion can hardly be deemed ‘acting’. Bellingham is both hypermasculine and barely masculine, in the stereotypical sense of the term: he rescues children and seduces women, yet his mother makes his choices, he needs nursing, and he feels uneasy. Rather than see him as careless and passive, Patsy Stoneman suggests that Bellingham is ‘ethically culpable’, for he ‘was sexually conscious and morally responsible when he seduced and deserted Ruth’ (Stoneman 2006, 72), whereas Gaskell stresses how ‘childish’ Ruth is: ‘Remember how young, and innocent, and motherless she was!’ (RU , 34, 47). Likewise, Deborah Logan points out that ‘Ruth is like a child when she first meets Bellingham’ and ‘[y]oung, trusting, and pliant, Ruth views Bellingham as one of a series of protectors, each of whom has temporarily taken her parents’ place’ and thus trusts that, when Bellingham places her in his carriage, he will drive her to her old caretakers’ home (Logan 1995, 36). Ruth is undoubtedly young, but Gaskell also makes it clear that Bellingham is not overly mature: [H]e did not in general analyse the nature of his feelings, but simply enjoyed them with the delight which youth takes in experiencing new and strong emotion. He was old compared to Ruth, but young as a man; hardly three-andtwenty. The fact of his being an only child had given him, as it does to many, a sort of inequality in those parts of the character which are usually formed by the number of years that a person has lived. (RU , 27)

Gaskell suggests that Bellingham is genuine in his attraction to Ruth: when he first sees her, ‘a new, passionate, hearty feeling shot through his whole being’ and he ‘did not know why he was so fascinated by her’ (28). That being said, Bellingham sees Ruth as his property, ‘one whom he had already begun to appropriate as his own’ (39), and he treats her with ‘the joyousness of a child playing with a new toy’ (61). Gaskell specifically links him to a child with a toy: not malicious, not considering the outcome, just enjoying himself and leaving significant decisions to others (in this case, his mother). In contrast, Marysa Demoor looks at Bellingham’s association with horses to argue that he is a powerful brute, cruel, merciless, and

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monstrous (Demoor 1995, 177). Bellingham is indeed linked to horses; for example, Jemima declares: Mr. Donne [Bellingham] is like that horse [in] the sort of repressed eagerness in both…Have you never seen a dull red light come into his eyes? That is like my race-horse. Her flesh quivered all over, at certain sounds and noises which had some meaning to her; but she stood quite still, pretty creature! Now, Mr. Donne is just as eager as she was, though he may be too proud to show it. Though he seems so gentle, I almost think he is very headstrong in following out his own will. (RU , 214)

‘Gentle’ is significant, simultaneously drawing attention to notions of class (the gentleman), to bearing, and to tenderness, while also denoting domestication (of an animal). Another reading of Bellingham’s association with horses, thus, could be that although powerful and brutish, he usually cedes to the will of others and obeys commands. Unlike Jemima’s characterisation, Bellingham, like a well-trained horse, obediently listens to his mother when she tells him to leave Ruth. Whereas Hawthorne opens with Dimmesdale already weakened and feminised, Gaskell plots not only the sexual ‘fall’ of Ruth but also the loss of virility in Bellingham and the process by which his male sexuality ultimately leads to his emasculation, his illness, and his weak passivity and obedience. Gaskell’s presentation of Bellingham as a seducer who is not actively bad but rather careless is mirrored in George Eliot’s Arthur Donnithorne, who, like Bellingham, possesses a ‘certain carelessness and confidence’ (Eliot 1992, 146). Though written after Ruth, Adam Bede (1859) can be considered as a novel from the same time responding to similar notions of masculinity. Gaskell and Eliot respond to the same cultural moment, with Ruth’s sin being seen as contagious and the parson in Adam Bede declaring, ‘evil spreads as necessarily as disease’ (480), and both present women who are young and naïve and become self-destructive after their ‘fall’; like Ruth, Hetty is ‘all but a child’ (348), and like Ruth, she contemplates drowning herself (430, 434). Further, Gaskell and Eliot respond to the same socially constructed version of masculinity that allows men who view themselves as ‘good’ to excuse themselves from affairs that have disastrous effects on the lives of women. Like Bellingham, Arthur is a gentleman in a higher position than the woman he seduces; Arthur declares, ‘Every man likes to flirt with a pretty girl, and every pretty girl likes to be flirted with. The wider the distance

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between them, the less harm there is, for then she’s not likely to deceive herself’ (337). Though Arthur maintains, ‘No gentleman, out of a ballad, could marry a farmer’s niece. There must be an end to the whole thing at once. It was too foolish’ (156), Hetty believes, ‘he must love her very much—no one else had ever put his arm round her and kissed her in that way. He would want to marry her and make a lady of her’ (169). Similarly, Arthur does not intend to deceive, is uneasy to leave Hetty behind, is childish, and tries to get rid of his own uneasiness: He was distressed for Hetty’s sake, and distressed for his own, that he must leave her behind…on Hetty’s account he was filled with uneasiness…He had said no word with the purpose of deceiving her—her vision was all spun by her own childish fancy—but he was obliged to confess to himself that it was spun half out of his own actions…he resolutely turned away his eyes from any bad consequence that was not demonstrably inevitable. (352)

Further, Eliot writes, ‘A sudden dread here fell like a shadow across his imagination…But he shook them off…Arthur told himself he did not deserve that things should turn out badly. He had never meant beforehand to do anything his conscience disapproved; he had been led on by circumstances. There was a sort of implicit confidence in him that he was really such a good fellow at bottom’ (356). He is able, like Bellingham, to justify his actions to himself. Similarly, Arthur does not see himself as cruel: ‘he had an agreeable confidence that his faults were all of a generous kind—impetuous, warm-blooded, leonine; never crawling, crafty, reptilian. It was not possible for Arthur Donnithorne to do anything mean, dastardly, or cruel’ (138). Further, he is young (‘but twenty-one’) and lacks control and perhaps the ‘self-mastery enough to be always as harmless and purely beneficent as his good-nature led him to desire’ (140). Like Bellingham, Arthur is made uncomfortable by deserting the ‘fallen woman’: Arthur had felt a twinge of conscience during Mr. Poyser’s speech, but it was too feeble to nullify the pleasure he felt in being praised…[A]fter all, what had he done? Gone a little too far, perhaps, in flirtation, but another man in his place would have acted much worse; and no harm would come—no harm should come…Uncomfortable thoughts must be got rid of by good intentions for the future, which can be formed so

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rapidly that he had time to be uncomfortable and to become easy again before Mr. Poyser’s slow speech was finished. (298)

These similarities suggest Gaskell’s and Eliot’s shared frustration with the Victorian model of manliness that allows the man to be excused— by himself and by society—for an act which ruins a woman’s life. Bellingham does not stand in isolation as a self-absorbed, careless seducer; in re-casting Hawthorne’s weak-willed lover into the realm of realism, Gaskell makes it clear that such figures are not just confined to allegorical romances but are very much a part of the contemporary social construction of masculinity.

Deformed Masculinity Not only does Gaskell echo Hawthorne in depicting a strong fallen woman, her strange illegitimate child, and a weak and ill seducer, but she also parallels him in presenting the second most prominent male figure as a deformed man who lacks ‘traditional’ male sexuality. Though Chillingworth and Benson are radically different characters, both deformed men cause the fallen woman harm in some way. Hawthorne’s Hester declares, ‘I hate him [Chillingworth]!…He betrayed me! He has done me worse wrong than I did him!’ (Hawthorne 2007, 138). In Ruth, Benson’s creation of the secret surrounding Ruth causes, perhaps, more wrong than her own sexual ‘wrong’; though her liaison with Bellingham might have been forgiven, the fact that she lied, permitting her to act as governess and model of rightness to Bradshaw’s children, is what ultimately turns many against her. Hawthorne’s and Gaskell’s interest in deformity is not altogether surprising. Many critics have looked at the ways in which Victorians were fascinated by deformities; Marlene Tromp’s Victorian Freaks (2009) examines their obsession with freak shows and putting deformities on display, as well as their difficulties in understanding ‘freakery’ and defining ‘normalcy’ (Tromp 2009, 2, 8). In this context, deformities were considered a spectacle, a sight to be ridiculed as well as puzzled over as a sign of otherness. Nadja Durbach’s Spectacle of Deformity (2009) explores the Victorian interest in viewing abnormal bodies not only as a means to make money but also as a way to spark scientific debates over physical differences (Durbach 2009, 1). The interest in deformity spread beyond freak shows to fiction of the time, and the figure of the deformed male is

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not altogether uncommon in nineteenth-century fiction, particularly in a monstrous or supernatural light as in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) or Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). Other authors examine less extreme deformities and their influence on one’s psychological state and reception by society, such as George Eliot in The Mill on the Floss (1860). Eliot’s Philip Wakem is continually reduced to his deformity, referred to as ‘the deformed lad’ (Eliot 2008, 72), and this defining feature not only limits what kind of career he can have but also what kind of man he can be. Philip’s deformity excludes him from notions of a strong, fighting masculinity—for Tom will not hit one ‘no better than a girl’ (173) and the swordsmanship instructor wonders ‘contemptuously; “what’s the use of his looking on?”’ (172)—as well as from ideals of romantic manliness. Maggie does not even place Philip in the category of a potential suitor; though he ages over the course of the novel, he does not grow into a mature, sexualised male but rather appears to remain a young boy to be pitied, as is shown in Maggie’s reactions: ‘The deepening expression of pain on Philip’s face gave him a stronger resemblance to his boyish self, and made the deformity appeal more strongly to her pity’ (302) and ‘There was not the slightest promise of love toward him in [Maggie’s] manner; it was nothing more than the sweet girlish tenderness she had shown him when she was twelve. Perhaps she would never love him; perhaps no woman ever could love him’ (308). As Elaine Showalter argues, his status as a cripple has made Philip lead ‘a girl’s life…as immobilized as Maggie herself’, and she points to a tradition in Victorian literature of sensitive, empathetic men as maimed and of ‘men condemned to lifelong feminine roles display[ing] the personality traits of frustrated women’, such as susceptibility, irritation, and bitterness (Showalter 2014, 104). The Mill on the Floss was published seven years after Ruth, but both novels are alert to the same cultural concepts and written in the genre of realism; later, Gaskell would return to the notion of the crippled male in Sylvia’s Lovers . From his introduction in The Scarlet Letter, Roger Chillingworth is marked by his physical differences, for his ‘slight deformity’ in having the ‘peculiarity’ of uneven shoulders (Hawthorne 2007, 49) sets him apart from the crowd and notifies Hester that he is in fact her longabsent husband. Chillingworth himself draws attention to his deformity, marking it as a reason for Hester’s unfaithfulness: ‘what had I to do with youth and beauty like thine own! Misshapen from my birth-hour, how

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could I delude myself with the idea that intellectual gifts might veil physical deformity in a young girl’s fantasy!’ (59–60). Here, Chillingworth’s earnestness stands to be questioned, as in ostensibly criticising himself, he subtly charges Hester with conceited notions of her own appearance and a vain inability to look past his; the anxiety about his deformity still rings true, for it is clear that though he values his intellect, he knows that others reduce him to his physical differences. Hawthorne emphasises that Chillingworth’s deformity causes him to be viewed differently: ‘Roger Chillingworth—a deformed old figure with a face that haunted men’s memories longer than they liked—took leave of Hester Prynne, and went stooping away’ (137). It is not enough to remark on his age or face; it is his deformed figure that contributes, in part, to his creepily recurring nature, turning him into a figure of haunting who belongs more to the sinister category of ghosts, ethereally outside the boundaries of humanity. The deformity partly causes his ‘stooping’ gait, which could refer solely to Chillingworth’s bending to gather herbs or could refer to other denotations of ‘stoop’, including ‘to lower or degrade oneself morally; to descend to something unworthy’ or ‘to descend swiftly on its prey…to descend to the lure’ (OED). In this manner, Chillingworth’s deformity links him to a different—lower— moral category and to predators. As Hester watches him stoop, she wonders whether he will sink into the earth or whether he would spread bat’s wings, and she muses, ‘Did the sun, which shone so brightly everywhere else, really fall upon him? Or was there, as it rather seemed, a circle of ominous shadow moving along with his deformity whichever way he turned himself?’ (137). Although most of her questions concern his evilness, this mention of his deformity shows that his physical nature is linked to his moral nature and that the deformity is seen as an outward symbol of his inner corruption. Similarly, after the shipmaster refers to Chillingworth as ‘the black-a-visaged, hump shouldered old doctor’ (191), he is then described as ‘dark, disturbed, and evil’ as if he could have risen ‘up out of some nether region’ (196). Hawthorne appears to conflate Chillingworth’s darkened skin with his darkened nature, just as his humped shoulder signifies his disturbed and evil interior. Though he can try to manipulate his face to hide his ‘eager, searching, almost fierce’ look (133), Chillingworth’s deformity makes it impossible for him to hide his evil nature, for Hawthorne makes it clear that it is a continual reminder of his association with nether regions.

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Here, too, Gaskell takes her lead from Hawthorne, but she takes his representation of deformed masculinity and treats it in a different manner. Chillingworth’s deformity stands as a symbol of the fact that he is inwardly wrong, thus aligning Hawthorne’s text with medieval allegory and romance, for the deformity does not affect Chillingworth himself but rather affects how others see him. In contrast, Thurstan Benson’s deformity changes him, as Gaskell uses the mode of realism to examine his interiority. Further, while Chillingworth’s deformity sets him outside ‘normal’ masculinity—and even humanity—as a figure of haunting, Thurstan Benson’s deformity allows him to represent a different form of masculinity, a more tender and feminised version. Whereas Chillingworth is linked to figures outside the realm of realism to render him more menacing, Bellingham links Benson to otherworldly characters in a demeaning way, to lessen rather than heighten his importance. Bellingham tells Ruth, ‘I’ve seen your little hunchback. He looks like Riquet-with-the-Tuft. He’s not a gentleman, though. If it had not been for his deformity, I should not have made him out from your description; you called him a gentleman’ (RU , 58). Bellingham refuses to grant Benson the status of ‘gentleman’, reducing him to his deformity instead. Though Bellingham will not deem Benson a gentleman, Ruth and others do speak of him as such. Nevertheless, through free indirect discourse, Gaskell makes it unclear whether he is regarded as a gentleman by all other characters or only by the narrator: ‘The bonnylooking hostess, Mrs. Hughes by name, made haste to light the candle, and then they saw each other, face to face. The deformed gentleman looked very pale, but Ruth looked as if the shadow of death was upon her’ (81). With these subtle hints at the indeterminacy of Benson’s class, Gaskell uses Benson to illustrate that the category of the ‘gentleman’ is a social construct, reliant upon notions of class, regional differences, and moral categories. Just as it is difficult to place Benson in a particular class, it is equally difficult to confine him to traditional categories of feminine or masculine. Like Chillingworth, Benson is first described in the text with reference to his deformity: [Ruth] looked up and saw a man, who was apparently long past middle life, and of the stature of a dwarf; a second glance accounted for the low height of the speaker, for then she saw he was deformed. As the consciousness of this infirmity came into her mind, it must have told itself in her softened

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eyes, for a faint flush of colour came into the pale face of the deformed gentleman… (56)

Both men are aged, both are deformed, and both are noted to be low in stature; nevertheless, Benson’s deformity draws out in others not shudders or fear but rather a ‘softening’. Whereas Chillingworth’s deformity links him to hellish evil, Benson’s deformity seems to grant him an otherworldly sense of sympathy, for he is noted to have a ‘look of heavenly pity in his eyes’ (78). He is likewise linked to the supernatural, but again in a positive manner: he speaks ‘gently…in the tone of one who has found the hidden spell by which to rule spirits’ (82). The use of ‘gently’ is significant, for in addition to the contemporary use of ‘gentle’ as ‘enchanted or haunted by fairies’ (OED), Gaskell ties Benson’s enchanting powers to notions of tenderness and of a high moral and social class. While Chillingworth’s ‘supernatural’ powers allow him to ‘rule spirits’ in a malevolent way to influence Dimmesdale, Benson’s ‘heavenly’ powers are in line with his great compassion. When Ruth sees the ‘deformed gentleman she had twice seen before’, he takes in her ‘situation’ and ‘despair’ and ‘had compassion on her’ (RU , 78). Later, he is noted to have ‘wide’ sympathy (85), and his sympathy for Ruth and desire to help her leads him to strong displays of emotion: ‘The tears were full in his eyes; he almost trembled in his earnestness. He was faint with the strong power of his own conviction’ (99). Benson’s depth of sympathy sets him apart from a conventional Victorian model of masculinity, for Gaskell suggests that it aligns him more with a maternal model. She links him both to Ruth’s mother—‘[h]is pitiful look, or his words, reminded [Ruth] of the childish days when she knelt at her mother’s knee’ (79)—and to his own mother—‘nor was this self-reproach diminished by the forgiveness of the gentle mother, from whom Thurstan Benson derived so much of his character’ (110). His motherly side is also illustrated by similes to nature: his voice may be ‘too weak…but now it filled the little room with a loving sound, like the stock-dove’s brooding murmur over her young’ (148). It is telling that his maternal traits are linked to his ‘weak’ voice, for it is as if his more feminised emotional side can be attributed to his physical weaknesses. He is ‘startled’ when his voice is ‘deep…strong and unmodulated’ (207), characteristics most typically associated with manliness. Benson’s deformity weakens him and leaves him dependent on others; he states, ‘Any quick movement is apt to cause me a sudden loss of power

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in my back, and I believe I stumbled over some of these projecting stones. It will soon go off, and you will help me to go home, I am sure’ (80). He is reliant on others to have compassion to help him, and this dependence aligns him with stereotypically weak women or rather renders him even weaker, for instead of merely requiring help from a man, a female is still stronger than he is: he leans on Ruth physically and then later has her help him, for her ‘occasional copying, or patient writing to dictation…gave rest to Mr. Benson’s weary spine’ (339–340). Gaskell explicitly states that to some, his deformity feminises him: It was not the number of his years that made him feel old, for he was only sixty, and many men are hale and strong at that time of life; in all probability, it was that early injury to his spine which affected the constitution of his mind as well as his body, and predisposed him, in the opinion of some at least, to a feminine morbidness of conscience. He had shaken off somewhat of this since the affair with Mr. Bradshaw; he was simpler and more dignified than he had been for several years before, during which time he had been anxious and uncertain in his manner, and more given to thought than to action. (305)

Whereas Hawthorne uses the exterior to symbolise the interior, Gaskell shows the powerful psychological effects of the exterior on the interior. Further, she shows that ‘the opinion of some’ would associate femininity with anxiety and uncertainty, as well as thinking rather than acting; however, it is deliberately unclear whether she herself finds his conscience morbid or feminine. Is it the morbidity or the conscience that is ‘feminine’? Likewise, is it health or masculinity that is aligned with a less active conscience? Conscience presumably means ‘sensitivity’, with a hint that it is centred on the self, suggesting that it is the personal focus that makes it morbid. Though Gaskell evades giving definitive answers, she complexly weaves together questions of whether Benson’s physical deformity de-masculinises him or feminises him: is an emasculated man necessarily feminine, or does a lack of masculinity make him a marginalised, second-order citizen, socially constructed and viewed in similar ways to females? Though his deformity does weaken and emasculate him, it also transforms him into the exact type of hero who can save Ruth from drowning. As Pamela Parker argues, Gaskell ‘echo[es] the earlier rescue scene in which Bellingham plucks the drowning boy from the river’; however,

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since ‘Benson’s physical frailty precludes his participation in any conventional version of masculine heroics’, he saves her ‘not by traditional masculine action but by appealing to Ruth’s “tender nature”, telling her he is hurt and asking her not to leave him’ and ‘[i]n displaying his weakness and calling out to her feminine sympathies, he saves them both’ (Parker 1999, 58). Though his weakness renders him vulnerable, it does not prevent him from being heroic. Parker compellingly contends that ‘[i]n contrasting the rescue efforts of Bellingham and Benson, Gaskell discredits a masculine, aristocratic notion of benevolence while promoting an increasingly bourgeois and feminised form of Christian virtue’ (58). Audrey Jaffe writes that Benson’s ‘gentleness of manner and physical deformity exempt him from the demands of conventional masculinity’ (Jaffe 2007, 54). Though he is indeed separated from the bounds of conventional masculinity, one could alter that statement to argue that his physical deformity gives him his gentle behaviour; in other words, once the demands of conventional masculinity are taken away by his deformity, he can be gentle, rather than possessing an innate gentleness. Likewise, one could look at the social constructs of femininity to argue that his sister Faith’s apparent ‘masculine’ traits do not exempt her from the demands of conventional femininity; rather, the masculine role of helping her brother is forced, in a way, upon her, and this necessary role demands that she act in a more stereotypically masculine way. In order to show how certain characters deviate from gender norms, Gaskell first establishes that there is a stereotypical norm that many largely unquestioningly accept. For example, she presents characters who make assumptions about masculinity in general, with comments such as ‘You’ve twice the sense of your sister, Master Thurstan, that you have. Boys always has’ (RU , 113). For Gaskell, masculinity and femininity are relational terms, and, to that end, she uses depictions of unconventional femininity to shed light on terms of conventional masculinity and femininity alike. Faith remains unmarried so that she can care for her brother; though failing to conform to a standard of ‘conventional’ womanhood and the assumption that wanting marriage and children is ‘innately’ feminine, Faith does so not out of a ‘quirk’ of temperament but as a result of circumstance. By necessity, Faith is masculinised and partially liberated from the imperatives of conventional femininity; that said, she is not wholly liberated, as Gaskell still hints at repressed longings. Since the ‘man about the house’ is not manly, she becomes manly, and she and Benson become a combination role, both exhibiting traits stereotypically assigned to the

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other’s gender. Some elements of Faith’s behaviour seem to be deemed ‘masculine’ due to notions of social politeness for women, such as her having ‘some masculine tricks’ like whistling (91); others seem dependent on stereotypes that men are associated with practical sense, resolute action, and clear speaking and women with wandering, deliberating, and trembling: Her excellent practical sense, perhaps, made her a more masculine character than her brother. He was often so much perplexed by the problems of life, that he let the time for action go by; but she kept him in check by her clear, pithy talk, which brought back his wandering thoughts to the duty that lay straight before him, waiting for action…In this respect, Miss Benson had more faith than her brother—or so it seemed; for quick, resolute action in the next step of Life was all she required, while he deliberated and trembled… (167)

Though Faith’s practicality could be inherent, one could also suggest that she became practical—or at least more practical—due to her brother’s extreme indecision, that she needed to be resolute in order to keep him on track for tasks requiring action. Audrey Jaffe posits that Faith ‘fail[s] to conform to types [and is thus] able to cross boundaries of…gender’ (Jaffe 2007, 57). The notion of boundaries is critical, for it stresses that Gaskell is conscious of defined gender boundaries and strives to complicate them by meddling with their limits. Less sympathetically, John Kucich writes of Gaskell’s ‘frequent inversion of her protagonists’ sexual identity’, arguing that in many cases, ‘gender is not blurred or revised; it is flatly reversed. Women are rigidly masculinized, and men rigidly feminized, in static and stereotypical ways’ (Kucich 1990, 191). He notes that ‘Gaskell’s plots always pressure us into seeing these divisions as unnatural and often as regrettable’ (189). Firstly, though it is true that Gaskell can refer to gender roles in ‘rigid’ ways by, for instance, associating trembling with femininity, one could argue that she is also presenting contemporary stereotypes to draw attention to them, to stress that such stock assumptions exist, to question them—with asides shown above such as ‘perhaps’—and to nuance them. Secondly, though Benson’s feminisation may be presented as unnatural, it is hardly regrettable, for it is his maternal touch that saves Ruth from drowning. Moreover, as Jaffe points out, ‘the feminized minister [and] strong sister…represent social and moral alternatives to the Bradshaws,

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unhappy in their prescribed roles…Benson is deformed, his sister unmarried, and Gaskell repeatedly associated them with an older way of life, one that is now in ideological competition with the livelihood of the prosperous mercantile classes’ (Jaffe 2000, 86). In other words, Gaskell’s unconventional gender roles are not ‘regrettable’ but rather a welcome alternative to modern social structures, for in contrast to the conventional Bradshaws, the Bensons are sympathetic and welcoming characters; further, they serve to emphasise that gender in general is a social construct and that ideas of masculinity and femininity alter over time and social group. Conversely, one could also argue that the Bensons exhibit notions of the complementarity of sexual roles, albeit reversed, that could be aligned with the ‘separate spheres’ ideology, for there is a sense that Benson’s gentleness opens up a space which must be filled, in this case by his sister, for a (quasi-) family to function; as such, his gentleness could be seen as a deficiency, for Faith is then forced to play the ‘masculine’ role. Just as Benson’s deformity results in an atypical gender role with regard to sympathy and his familiar role, both his deformity—and Chillingworth’s—set them outside stereotypically ‘traditional’ masculinity with regard to romantic and sexualised manliness. Whereas Benson develops feminine elements, it could be argued that Chillingworth develops elements of homoeroticism. Scott Derrick uses Eve Sedgwick’s framework of the erotic triangle as disguise of and conduit for desire between men: ‘Both Chillingworth and Dimmesdale have relations with Hester Prynne…Throughout the novel, however, we rarely see either male having contact with Prynne; instead, they take up residence with each other’ (Derrick 1995, 309) and have an ‘intimacy [that] generates for Dimmesdale a set of anxieties directly and obsessively related to Chillingworth’s body and his own’ (310). Derrick’s point is compelling, particularly considering Hawthorne’s language as Chillingworth seeks to learn Dimmesdale’s secrets: So Roger Chillingworth…strove to go deep into his patient’s bosom, delving among his principles, prying into his recollections, and probing everything with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a dark cavern…A man burdened with a secret should especially avoid the intimacy of his physician. (Hawthorne 2007, 98)

Every element of Hawthorne’s language here—from bosoms and intimacy to probing and treasure-seeking in caverns—is eroticised. Claudia

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Johnson, who reads The Scarlet Letter as ‘a tale shaped by impotence’, sees the real tragedy of the novel ‘proceed[ing] not so much from Hester’s adultery as it does from her arranged marriage with an impotent man’ and notes the irony in his first name of Roger (Johnson 1993, 596). The fact that Chillingworth is old and does not father a child with Hester rings true and Johnson argues her point convincingly, but her point about the common slang of ‘roger’ as ‘penis’ could be further applied to these aforementioned passages.2 By keeping in mind that it is Roger who is doing the delving, prying, and probing, the hint of homoeroticism seems barely concealed; likewise, the usage of ‘Old Roger’ as a familiar name for the devil (OED) should also be considered, as Hawthorne conflates the two facets of this name as Roger watches the sleeping Dimmesdale with an element of evil and of erotic voyeurism: ‘But what distinguished [Chillingworth’s] ecstasy from Satan’s was the trait of wonder in it!’ (109). This sexualised prose and language of penetration continues throughout the text, with Chillingworth ‘[digging] into the poor clergyman’s heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather, like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man’s bosom, but likely to find nothing save mortality and corruption’ (102). Although Gaskell does not borrow this language of homoeroticism from Hawthorne, she does echo the notion of a deformed man deviating from conventional masculine sexual roles. Just as Chillingworth comments that he is not surprised Hester does not love his deformed, old self, W.A. Craik argues that Benson’s deformity ‘prevents any suggestion of such an attraction between him and Ruth’ (Craik 1975, 77). One could expand Craik’s intimation to argue that the figures of the deformed male and the heroic male are very much social constructions. If the young, fit Bellingham or Lovelace saves a woman, he is placed in the category of romantic icon; if one with a deformity does so, he is a kind, sympathetic, almost feminine man. Benson is left with no sexual identity whatsoever. The question, then, lies in the implications of this lack of sexuality. Other examinations of literary masculinity link sexuality and aggression; for instance, Albert Guérard writes of ‘aggressive sexuality’ and ‘sexlessness or unaggressiveness’ in his work on masculinity and impotence in Thomas Hardy (Guérard 1949, 114, 155). Phillip Mallett critiques this assumption, arguing that Guérard does so ‘within a framework that too readily assumed agreement about what counts as “normally aggressive” in male sexuality’ (Mallet 2010, 388). With this framework in

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mind, one can examine the links between Benson’s lack of sexuality and his lack of aggression to question whether Benson is emancipated from so-called ‘normal’ male aggression or deficient in it. In other words, does his freedom from ‘normal’ gender conventions of aggressiveness cause him to be deficient in ‘healthy’ sexuality and thus pitied, or are his lessened sexuality and aggression a form of liberation, a freedom from the imperatives of conventional manliness, allowing him a positive gentleness precluded from traditional masculinity? Gaskell’s depiction of a ‘conventional’ masculinity in Bradshaw suggests the latter, for though Bradshaw represents normative manhood, he is clearly not successful as husband or father. Mrs Bradshaw ‘murmured faintly at her husband when his back was turned; but if his voice was heard, or his footsteps sounded in the distance, she was mute, and hurried her children into the attitude or action most pleasing to their father’ (RU , 172). Bradshaw’s version of masculinity is likewise stifling to his daughter, Jemima, who ‘had not, as yet, overcome her awe of her father sufficiently to act independently of him’ (72) and whose ‘actions were so submissive that they were spiritless; she did all her father desired; she did it with a nervous quickness and haste…the light was gone out of her eyes as she lifted them up heavily before replying to any question, and the eyelids were often swollen with crying’ (183). Bradshaw is only redeemed at the end of the novel, when he learns to nuance his ‘condemnation of all outward error and vice’ (173) and display the compassion that Benson represents, as ‘sympathy choked up his voice, and filled his eyes with tears’ (369). Moreover, in considering Benson’s lack of sexuality, one could consider his similarities to Hawthorne’s Dimmesdale: both men are ministers, both deceive their congregations, and both represent a form of emasculated masculinity. When comparing Bellingham with Dimmesdale, one could consider Gaskell’s choice not to weaken permanently Bellingham’s form of virile maleness as a devastating indictment of the inevitability of the resurgence of masculine power; however, in comparing the ministers, one could argue that Benson’s difference from Dimmesdale offers some hope to prevailing gender norms. Whereas Dimmesdale’s emasculation and feminisation result in trembling, nervous agitation and crushing feebleness, debilitating him to the point of death, Gaskell imbues Benson with positive traits: nurturance, sympathy, compassion, and forgiveness, as well as a form of heroism detached from physical strength. While Hawthorne suggests that a feminised masculinity functions as a reduced,

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almost decaying manhood, Gaskell challenges this framework, emphasising the favourable and progressive aspects in those who are able to combine society’s conventional or ‘typical’ masculine and feminine gender roles. Thus, Gaskell suggests that the ‘norm’ of masculinity needs to be challenged to incorporate aspects that others might link only to ‘deformed’ manhood. Gaskell’s representation of the deformed male begs questions of what it means to be male, to be manly, and to be a gentleman. In doing so, she brings the ill, weak-willed lover and the atypical deformed man from Hawthorne’s romance into the world of realism, emphasising the importance of the social construction of masculinity. Like Hawthorne, Gaskell criticises the condemnation of a woman’s fall from ‘the ideal’; what is more, she suggests that there is no ‘ideal’ man but rather that masculinity is inescapably flawed. It seems no coincidence that Gaskell borrowed the name of her male lead, Bellingham, from The Scarlet Letter, for it is not merely Hawthorne’s fallen woman and illegitimate child that echo through Ruth; his portraits of manliness and emasculation also reverberate throughout Gaskell’s text. Though perhaps not planned as a calculated riposte, Ruth’s representation of masculinity shows that Gaskell had Hawthorne in mind in adopting, adapting, changing, and challenging his conception of gender roles as she offered a devastating yet hopeful look at her society’s prevailing norms.

Notes 1. Gaskell’s letters reveal that her publisher, Edward Chapman, was going to send back her re-bound copy of The Scarlet Letter: ‘How is the Scarlet letter going on? Pray ease my mind my sending me the account as soon as ever it is rebound, and dispatched to it’s [sic] destination’ (Letters, 142). Portico Library records show that Reverend Gaskell borrowed Hawthorne’s Transformation twice, in 1860 and 1862 (Healy 2017, A77, A89), and Elizabeth Gaskell’s letters show an interest in Hawthorne—‘he [Martin Tupper] met him and greeted him All Hail Great Scarlet Letter!’ (Letters, 392)—and his works (575, 674). Though Hawthorne and Gaskell shared many of the same friends, as yet there is no record of their ever having met (Uglow 1993, 310; Chapple, Portrait 1980, 133; Shelston 2001, 58), and Shirley Foster notes, ‘Gaskell must…have heard much about Hawthorne through these various connections’ (Foster 2002, 137).

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2. This slang pre-dates the contemporary slang of ‘roger’ as a verb indicating intercourse and would have been common in the nineteenth century (OED).

CHAPTER 5

Models of Masculinity in David Copperfield and Cousin Phillis

Elizabeth Gaskell and Charles Dickens’s working relationship has been discussed at length, as has his role in editing her works (cf. Hopkins 1946, Vann 1989, Uglow 1993). Further, their industrial fiction, including Hard Times (1854) and North and South (1854), has been frequently examined in conjunction (cf. Ingham 1996). The intertextuality between Dickens’s David Copperfield and Gaskell’s Cousin Phillis , however, has yet to receive proper attention, notwithstanding Phillip Mallett’s identification of some ‘striking’ resemblances between the plots (Mallett 2011, 149–150). Though David Copperfield (1849–1850) appeared long before Cousin Phillis (1864), it is evident that Gaskell revisits Dickens’s novel after its publication. She makes reference to liking David Copperfield in a letter to Eliza Fox in May 1849, promising to return her copy soon (Letters, 77), and William Gaskell, who often borrowed books on his wife’s behalf, twice took David Copperfield out of Manchester’s Portico Library, on 5 July 1852 and on 8 November 1858 (Healy 2017, A22, A63). This interest in Dickens’s novel is underlined by the ways in which many facets of Cousin Phillis echo the storyline of Steerforth and Em’ly in David Copperfield. By examining in conjunction the titular characters, the narrators, the romantically involved men, and the fathers, one can see how Gaskell borrows characters and ideas from Dickens, transforming them from the sensational into the domestic. By rewriting a dramatic episode of seduction and betrayal as a tale of disappointed love, Gaskell shows that Dickens’s models of masculinity are capable of causing tragedy and despair even in a quieter, less scandalous frame. © The Author(s) 2020 M. Lowe, Masculinity in the Work of Elizabeth Gaskell, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48397-5_5

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Eponymous Characters Though David Copperfield and Phillis Holman share few similarities, it is curious that both characters are likened to children of the opposite sex. David’s aunt continues asking ‘How is she?…And she? How is she?…The baby…How is she?’, then ‘aim[s] a blow at Mr Chillip’s head’ when told that the baby is, in fact, a boy (Dickens 2000, 13). This anticipated girl, prematurely named Betsey Trotwood Copperfield, is left to ‘the land of dreams and shadows’ (13) yet reappears in the text. David’s aunt reminds him, ‘Your sister, Betsey Trotwood…would have been as natural and rational a girl as ever breathed. You’ll be worthy of her, won’t you?’ (256). Later, Steerforth asks David if he has a sister, and upon receiving a negative reply, remarks, ‘That’s a pity…If you had had one, I should think she would have been a pretty, timid, bright-eyed sort of girl’ (84). Looking at David, Steerforth can imagine what his sister would be like and uses him to create an idealised version of a girl; his aunt also sees his non-existent sister as an ideal, the standard to which David should be held. Whereas Dickens writes sardonically of David’s not only disappointing his aunt but also replacing and standing for an imagined girl, Gaskell presents a much more melancholy version. Instead of a ridiculous aunt with erroneous foresight and a handsome man fancying a timid girl, Gaskell shows parents who love Phillis in place of a dead son: [Phillis] was more than ever the very apple of her father’s eye; her mother gave her both her own share of love, and that of the dead child who had died in infancy. I have heard cousin Holman murmur, after a long dreamy look at Phillis, and tell herself how like she was growing to Johnnie, and soothe herself with plaintive inarticulate sounds, and many gentle shakes of the head, for the aching sense of loss she would never get over in this world. (CP, 219)

While David’s aunt expresses her dissatisfaction, Phillis’s parents give her all the more love, as well as more education. Philip Rogers notes that Holman teaches Phillis ‘not from a belief in his daughter’s unique promise or the desirability of her knowing Latin and Greek but rather from his having made her a son-surrogate’ (Rogers 1995, 29). In both cases, the titular characters serve as surrogates, but the case in Gaskell’s work is bittersweet, a note of sadness rather than of farce. This small example mirrors the pattern in which Gaskell continually transforms elements from Dickens’s novel and quietly understates them.

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Narrators Gaskell is a female writer focalising on a female yet using a male narrator, whereas Dickens is a male writer using a male voice as narrator; nonetheless, David is portrayed as feminine at times. In this manner, we find a woman adopting a masculine persona and a man adopting a feminised one. Though the feminine voice in David Copperfield is less overt than the masculine narration of Paul Manning, it is nevertheless clear. For one, David lacks the stereotypically Victorian male trait of agency; whereas women were often considered the more passive of the sexes, David does not display many signs of male action: he does not take down Uriah Heep himself, nor can he fight the butcher successfully, merely cutting his own knuckles open on the butcher’s face. Dickens goes so far as to have Steerforth refer to David as ‘Daisy’. He declares, ‘My very young Davy…you are a very Daisy. The daisy of the field, at sunrise, is not fresher than you are’ (Dickens 2000, 269); exclaims, ‘You romantic Daisy’ (272); remarks, ‘We’ll drink the daisies of the field, in compliment to you’ (275); and notes, ‘though that’s not the name your godfathers and godmothers gave you, it’s the name I like best to call you by—and I wish, I wish, I wish, you could give it to me!’ (403). These remarks suggest that Steerforth chose the name with a sense of its innocence and gentleness—traits that he knows cannot be ascribed to him. Moreover, Miss Dartle questions this naming, asking, ‘[I]s it a nickname? And why does he give it you? Is it—eh?—because he thinks you young and innocent?’ to which David ‘coloured in replying that [he] believed it was’ (277). Joseph Bottum comments, ‘a young man called Daisy must be seduced’ (Bottum 1995, 438), seemingly likening him to a naïve heroine, but yet deeming the nickname ‘diminishing’ rather than feminising (437), despite the fact that Daisy is a particularly feminine name. With this feminisation of David in mind, it becomes clear that both Gaskell and Dickens are using narrative voices with gender roles opposite to their own. David Copperfield’s narration is matched by that of Paul Manning. With a title of The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account, Dickens clearly presents a bildungsroman, whereas Gaskell uses Paul to narrate Phillis’s tale. Yet Paul Manning’s name itself implies that at least part of the story concerns his ‘manning’, his growing into manhood. Clare Pettitt points out that ‘the novella is ostensibly concerned with the process of Paul’s coming to age

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intellectually and sexually, but his centrality to his bildungsroman is challenged by his function as narrator, as the interpreter of other, obscure signs’ (Pettitt 1998, 482). Heidi Hansson concurs that through telling Phillis’s story, Paul is also telling ‘his own story of growing up and becoming a man, a story resembling the traditional hero-myth—despite the fact that Paul is definitely not of the heroic type’ (Hansson 2008, 427). Although the female characters of Em’ly and Phillis play quite different roles in their respective novels, the male narrators lead similar roles. Both are attached to these women in some way: Paul is biologically Phillis’s cousin, and Em’ly is like a sister to David. David remarks, ‘Of course I was in love with little Em’ly. I am sure I loved that baby quite as truly, quite as tenderly, with greater purity and more disinterestedness’ (Dickens 2000, 36). While Steerforth wishes David had a sister, Carolyn Oulton notes that ‘[i]n place of the sister that David has never possessed, Steerforth seduces his surrogate sister, the equally naïve Emily’ (Oulton 2004, 167). In contrast to David’s fondness, Paul senses keenly Phillis’s superior learning and height. As Barbara Hardy points out, Paul ‘is attracted by Phillis’ but her superiority prevents him from falling in love with her: ‘he regards her with a cousin’s eye and heart, at first suspicious and defensive, then attentive and affectionate’ (Hardy 2005, 27). This affection that both narrators feel for the respective female characters leads them also to share a sense of guilt in the events that transpire. Both narrators are responsible for introducing the women to the men with whom they become enamoured. David knows he is embroiled in bringing Steerforth into Em’ly’s life: ‘Deeply as I felt my own unconscious part in his pollution of an honest home, I believed that if I had been brought face to face with him, I could not have uttered one reproach’ (Dickens 2000, 421). He knows he is partly to blame, yet he will not claim responsibility since it was unconsciously done, nor will he reproach Steerforth for his actions. The use of ‘pollution’ implies that which is pervasive, with far-reaching contamination: this corruption could be moral and physical, and it could have multiple sources, stemming not just from Steerforth but from David as well. One could argue that David cannot reproach Steerforth because he knows—consciously or not—that Steerforth is partly acting upon his desire for David himself. Steerforth, having wished David had a sister, chooses Em’ly as this sister figure; in other words, having viewed David as a sexualised figure, Steerforth projects this sexualisation onto Em’ly and then seduces her. In this

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transfer of desire, David sees himself as partly responsible yet cannot blame himself. Moreover, he is not blamed by others; Ham declares, ‘Mas’r Davy…it ain’t no fault of yourn—and I am far from laying of it to you’ (419). Gaskell seems to borrow this trajectory, for, similarly, Paul introduces Holdsworth to the Holmans and even tells Phillis of Holdsworth’s love for her. Unlike David, however, he is held accountable by her father, who declares, ‘To put such thoughts into the child’s head…to spoil her peaceful maidenhood with talk about another man’s love…Oh, the misery in my poor little daughter’s face…—the misery, Paul! I thought you were one to be trusted—your father’s son too, to go and put such thoughts into the child’s mind’ (CP, 235). Though Paul is blamed by Holman, Gaskell suggests that he is not entirely guilty. Holdsworth loved Phillis and planned to return to marry her but did not, seeing no inherent problem as he had never himself spoken of his love; Paul innocently tells Phillis of Holdsworth’s love, naïvely believing he will return. Both narrators feel affection for the female lead and are also won over by the magnetism of the dashing man who charms her. Oulton points out that ‘[c]ritical responses to David Copperfield have been quick to identify a disturbing element in the relationship between David and the libidinous Steerforth’ (Oulton 2004, 156), looking to the ways in which David’s eyes water, his face blushes, and his heart beats at the thought of or in the presence of Steerforth. Oulton compellingly argues, however, that the context of the novel shows that ‘the attraction of Dickens’s hero to the untrustworthy Steerforth is not straightforwardly sexual in nature’ (157). She remarks that contemporaries were inclined to view such ‘fraternal esteem’ between men as ‘noble’ and to expect manliness to be expressed in male bonding, although the more romantic manifestations of male friendship were ‘confined to extreme youth’: ‘Dickens responded to the dangers of sexuality within his ideal of friendship by creating a symbolic division between youthful enthusiasm and the erotic’ (164). Oulton argues that though many passages to a modern reader ‘may inevitably suggest a level of eroticism’, David’s ‘love for his friend in the tradition of intense male friendship…was not directly questioned in the mid-nineteenth century’ (165). The distinction between friendship and the erotic may have seemed clear-cut to a mid-Victorian reader; it seems less so to a modern one. Dickens openly depicts David’s love for Steerforth; David says, ‘my old love for him overflowed my breast so freshly and spontaneously, that I went up to him at once, with a

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fast-beating heart’ (Dickens 2000, 268). At one point, David wakes up in the night and finds himself ‘sitting upright, with Steerforth’s name upon [his] lips’ (172). Dickens appears to conflate fraternal and romantic love, and passages such as these could be read in a homoerotic light. Dickens writes with more overt homoeroticism than Gaskell, looking more closely at where the divide between the homosocial and the homoerotic occurs. This boundary is ever-fluid for Steerforth and David for, as Oulton points out, theirs could be a typical friendship, yet the repetition of beating hearts and flushed faces cannot help calling out the question of homoerotic charge. Similarly, Paul and Holdsworth’s relationship has also been read for its homoerotic subtext; Anna Koustinoudi writes: ‘the figure of cousin Phillis serves only as a pretext for a deeper and more essential relation underlying the story’s subtext, the truly traumatic, and thus repressed homoerotic relation between the narrator, Paul Manning, and his employer Edward Holdsworth (one who is worth holding on to)’ (Koustinoudi 2008, 73). She reads Phillis as ‘an object of exchange between them, a mere facilitator of homosocial bonding’, linking their relationship to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s analysis of male homosocial desire ‘within the structural context of triangular, heterosexual desire’ (73). Sedgwick’s hypothesis of an unbroken continuum—rather than a firm dividing line—between the homosocial and the homosexual in Between Men (1985) could likewise be applied to the male homosociality or homosexuality between Steerforth and David. The hero-worship of Holman by Paul Manning in Cousin Phillis bears close resemblance to that of Steerforth by David. Steerforth declares to David, ‘I feel as if you were my property’—words which would prompt criticism in modern readers if directed towards a woman—and David is ‘[g]lowing with pleasure to find that he had still this interest’ (Dickens 2000, 271). Similarly, David narrates, ‘When Steerforth, in white trousers, carried her parasol for her, I felt proud to know him; and believed that she could not choose but adore him with all her heart’ (88). This pride in knowing Steerforth and in belonging to him is key, for Gaskell echoes this notion of adulation and ownership in Cousin Phillis ; Paul writes of his ‘much-vaunted friend’ (CP, 196): ‘He’s a regular first-rate fellow! He can do anything’, ‘[M]y hero-worship and my pride in my chief [Holdsworth] all [came] into play’ and, ‘Besides, if I was not clever and book-learned myself, it was something to belong to some one who was’ (178). Whereas Gaskell changes the relationship in the heterosexual plotline, she presents

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very similar fraternal attachments rooted in pride, possession, and veneration. It is worth noting, however, that though she mirrors the narrator’s hero-worship, Gaskell does not present quite as reciprocal a relationship as Dickens does; whereas Steerforth, for example, wishes David had a sister and enjoys listening to David’s stories, Paul’s affection for Holdsworth is not returned, or at least not in equivalent terms. That said, both authors depict male friendships in similar ways, exploring undertones of love and ownership. Both narrators hint at the darkness these men will bring. David narrates with knowledge of what is to come, for as he thinks of Steerforth, he remarks, ‘No veiled future dimly glanced upon him in the moonbeams. There was no shadowy picture of his footsteps, in the garden that I dreamed of walking in all night’ (Dickens 2000, 84). Paul writes knowing the future, declaring, ‘It is many years since I have seen thee, Edward Holdsworth, but thou wast a delightful fellow! Ay, and a good one too; though much sorrow was caused by thee!’ (CP, 199). Just as David vows to think of Steerforth at his finest, Paul, too, does not stop thinking of Holdsworth as ‘delightful’. Oulton characterises Dickens’s plotline: ‘The more dominant, and threatening, figure is finally expelled from the text as David asserts his right to tell his own story with himself at the center’ (Oulton 2004, 164); almost the same could be said for Gaskell, as the dominant Holdsworth is, in effect, expelled to Canada and Paul can again be the central young male character. The similarities that these affectionate, hero-worshipping narrators bear are too numerous to be entirely happenstance; Gaskell appears to have borrowed from Dickens, making drastic changes to the events but preserving the dynamics between the characters, to illustrate that these types of men exist in the everyday domestic world as well.

Holdsworth and Steerforth On a linguistic level, Dickens’s James Steerforth is replaced by Gaskell’s Edward Holdsworth. The similarity in their last names—nearly rhyming compound nouns—is too striking to be coincidence. Further, ‘steer’ and ‘hold’ echo each other; both are verbs associated with guiding or controlling people or things, and both are associated with sailing, navigation, and direction, be it holding to or steering a course. Though the plots diverge in that Steerforth seduces and abandons Em’ly, whereas Gaskell’s Holdsworth loves Phillis without telling her and moves to Canada, the

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men themselves—handsome, exotic, and enchanting—serve similar plot functions. From his introduction into the text, Steerforth has a commanding presence: he ‘cut his name very deep and very often’ (Dickens 2000, 76), and David muses on his ‘handsome face’ and ‘great power’ frequently. It is seen as no wonder that David worships him, for he has a godlike presence; he is the ‘one boy in the school on whom [Mr Creakle] never ventured to lay a hand’ (83), and he extends his power to David, declaring that he will ‘take care’ of him (84); David notes that ‘nobody dared to annoy one whom he honoured with his countenance’ (88). Steerforth is ‘spirited’, ‘independent’, ‘engaging’ (116), with a ‘natural gift of adapting himself to whomsoever he pleased’ (288). This ease and power of attraction is key: Steerforth has ‘an ease in his manner’ and ‘a kind of enchantment’ and is remarked for ‘his animal spirits, his delightful voice, his handsome face and figure, and…some inborn power of attraction of power besides…to have carried a spell with him to which it was a natural weakness to yield’ (99). There are similar passages in Gaskell’s story, which depicts Holdsworth as ‘young, handsome, keen, well-dressed, an object of admiration to all the youth of Eltham’ (CP, 182). Both men are exceptionally handsome, and Holdsworth, too, has enchanting powers, for Reverend Holman declares: I like him, and I think he is an upright man; there is a want of seriousness in his talk at times, but, at the same time, it is wonderful to listen to him! He makes Horace and Virgil living, instead of dead, by the stories he tells me of his sojourn in the very countries where they lived, and where to this day, he says—But it is like dram-drinking. I listen to him till I forget my duties, and am carried off my feet. (198–199)

This reference to dram-drinking suggests Holdsworth is like a drug as well as a type of supernatural being, bringing back the dead through his storytelling abilities that rival Odysseus’s or Othello’s. Like Steerforth, he has the ability to have an ‘unconscious hold’ over people, to speak ‘so easily and naturally’ (199). This easy charm in Holdsworth is seen as natural, for Paul explains that it was ‘no wonder: he had seen so much and done so much’ (199). By contrast, Steerforth is shown to be artful: ‘Steerforth exerted himself with his utmost skill, and that was with his utmost ease, to charm this singular creature [Miss Dartle] into a pleasant and pleased companion…That she should struggle against the fascinating influence of

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his delightful art—delightful nature I thought it then—did not surprise me either’ (Dickens 2000, 401). This differentiation—between skill and art versus nature—is significant, for Gaskell shows that it does not require an artful villain to overturn domestic harmony and cause tragedy. Just as Steerforth is shown to be exotic, known for ‘always running wild on some unknown expedition or other’ (Dickens 2000, 395), Holdsworth is similarly well-travelled; like David, Paul finds pleasure in telling others of his friend’s ‘many accomplishments and various adventures in travel’ (CP, 181). When introduced to Phillis, Holdsworth stands out as someone altogether different: Phillis becomes flushed ‘at his grand formality of taking his hat off and bowing’ for ‘such manners had never been seen at Hope Farm before’ (192). She asks Paul, ‘But is not he very like a foreigner?’ and declares, ‘I like an Englishman to look like an Englishman’ (194). Both men represent the allure of the unknown. Though these handsome, adventurous, enchanting men bear many similarities, their roles in their respective stories are much different. For Dickens, Steerforth brings about a melodramatic twist; he seduces Em’ly and then abandons her. Em’ly writes to her family, ‘…know what I suffer! I am too wicked to write about myself! Oh, take comfort in thinking that I am so bad’ and implores her family ‘to think as if I died when I was little, and was buried somewhere’ (Dickens 2000, 418). Others agree that she would have been better off dead; David tells Miss Dartle, ‘To wish her dead…may be the kindest wish that one of her own sex could bestow upon her’ (619). The anguish she feels is altogether different from that of Phillis, who feels the pangs of disappointed love, not deception and abandonment. Dickens’s plot is sensational: Em’ly has become a ‘fallen child’ (423) and Steerforth a ‘damned villain’ (419). In contrast, Holdsworth is far from evil. Unlike Steerforth, he is not portrayed as a sly seducer. Rather, Gaskell shows that he does sincerely love Phillis; Paul narrates, ‘I saw for the first time an unmistakable look of love in his black eyes; it was more than gratitude for the little attention; it was tender and beseeching—passionate’ (CP, 205). Though Paul is not always the most reliable of narrators, Holdsworth appears earnest. He himself declares, ‘Love her! Yes, that I do. Who could help it, seeing her as I have done? Her character as unusual and rare as her beauty’ (208). He engages in playful banter with her: His tone of badinage (as the French call it) would have been palpable enough to any one accustomed to the world; but Phillis was not, and it

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distressed or rather bewildered her…At first her earnestness to disclaim unkind motives amused Holdsworth; while his light continuance of the joke perplexed her still more; but at last he said something gravely, and in too low a tone for me to hear, which made her all at once become silent, and called out her blushes…Phillis kept very close to her father’s side on our return to the farm. She appeared to me to be shrinking away from Holdsworth, while he had not the slightest variation in his manner from what it usually was in his graver moods; kind, protecting, and thoughtful towards her. (202)

Holdsworth is flirtatious, but part of the misunderstanding is ascribed to the fact that Phillis has not been out in the world much; kept isolated by her parents, she does not understand this type of ‘badinage’. When he develops a more serious tone, it would appear to unsettle her further, for she physically shrinks away from him. That being said, it is not altogether clear whether she is retreating or he is accepting the distance; through the not-always-reliable narration, readers cannot fully interpret the dynamics of the scene or determine who is acting or reacting more strongly. Paul ensures that Holdsworth is not treated as a seducer, though, for he emphasises that he is nothing but pleasant and friendly: kind, protecting, and thoughtful. Though Jenny Uglow is critical of the fact that Holdsworth treats Phillis as someone from a fairytale, it is worth noting that he also treats himself as a fairytale prince. He speaks of her as ‘in her high tranquillity, her pure innocence’ and of ‘liv[ing] in such seclusion, almost like a sleeping beauty’ (CP, 208). Uglow writes, ‘Holdsworth loves an image of innocence, not a living woman…Denying the evidence of his eyes, and having said nothing, he can choose to believe her unawakened and can move on without guilt…Phillis, however, is already aroused’ (Uglow 1993, 548). Stoneman likewise argues that Holdsworth treats Phillis not as a living woman but ‘as a type rather than an individual’ and ‘shows no consciousness of the individual pain which the news of his marriage will bring’ (Stoneman 2006, 109). Though his typecasting of Phillis is evident, he also typecasts himself, describing himself as ‘com[ing] back like a prince from Canada, and waken[ing] her to my love’ (CP, 208). In this way, Gaskell’s novella is all the more heartbreaking, for it is not a simple case of wilful or one-sided disillusionment; Holdsworth had planned to return in fairytale fashion but proves too easily distracted.

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Unlike many Dickensian characters, Gaskell’s Holdsworth is not portrayed in extremes, as many critics point out. Winifred Gérin makes it clear that Holdsworth is no villain: ‘It would have been easy to make Holdsworth a villain. Mrs Gaskell did no such thing. She made him vividly alive and attractive, the better to account for Phillis’s love. It was no drama of seduction and desertion she was writing [but] something more subtle, an analysis of wounded feelings’ (Gérin 1976, 237). Other critics agree, though not completely acquitting him of any responsibility. Victoria Williams writes that though Holdsworth is ‘not a seducer attempting to ensnare Phillis’, he ‘does not discourage her affections’ (Williams 2010, 103); likewise, Uglow writes, ‘Holdsworth is no cool seducer, just a responsive man with carelessness that comes from moving in a different orbit’ (Uglow 1993, 546). Shirley Foster writes that it could be easy to read Gaskell’s work in a mythological vein: ‘Holdsworth is the devil who breaks into and destroys this idyll, the male talker whose fascinating conversation seduces not only Phillis but also her father who finds it irresistible, “like dram-drinking”’ (Foster 2002, 162). Yet she notes that such is not the case. Patricia Beer characterises him as sincere and honourable, placing him in Gaskell’s ‘interesting line in near-seducers: the flirts, the triflers, who without actually doing anything wrong cause a great deal of misery’ (Beer 1974, 153). Angus Easson points out that the novella ‘superficially repeats the familiar pattern of a woman brought to love by a man who then abandons her’ but that Gaskell’s ‘originality and power lie in the way she transforms such elements, in a story where no one is guilty except with good intention’ (Easson 1979, 223). Whereas Dickens presents the ‘familiar pattern’ of seduction and abandonment, Gaskell problematises and complicates the question of guilt. Gaskell herself employs this pattern in Ruth; one could argue that she uses Cousin Phillis to rework her own novel as well as respond to David Copperfield. Whereas her earlier novel is more explicitly framed as a ‘social problem’ novel or ‘novel with a purpose’ with its focus the fallen woman, Gaskell’s later text treats the ‘familiar pattern’ more subtly, revealing the potential for everyday tragedy in prevailing gender norms. In Cousin Phillis, she moves away from the melodrama of Dickens and the tragedy and scandal of Ruth (1853) to present a pattern that is close to life and that resonates with her own life. J.G. Sharps points out that Gaskell’s daughter Meta had a broken engagement and that ‘[a]lthough Holdsworth, unlike Captain Hill, never actually proposed, each gentleman left his beloved to go abroad, and in both

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cases the expected marriage did not take place’ (Sharps 1970, 440). Though not radical, the story is effective; Barbara Hardy writes, ‘Cousin Phillis ’s presentation of sexuality conforms to English expectations and custom: it does not deal with illicit and unmarried love…but it is lyrical, concentrated, passionate, sensuous, subtly erotic and in its way tragic’ (Hardy 2005, 26). Josie Billington writes of Cousin Phillis , ‘The marvel of Gaskell’s realism is that she recognises how obdurately difficult life is, and yet simply dissolves back into it’ (Billington 2002, 106); she does not delve into a long discussion of ideas but rather expresses life faithfully. Easson writes, ‘It is the absence of anyone culpable, which forces us to turn back and feel the suffering alone, that makes the story so painfully true—and in having Phillis live, Gaskell recognises the girl’s strength and a common enough harshness of life’ (Easson 1979, 225). In other words, by keeping the story from bordering on the melodramatic, she makes it all the more tragically harsh. The plethora of critics who point to the quiet tragedy in Cousin Phillis reinforce the idea that these similar types of men—the adventurous, enchanting, handsome suitors—can cause misery without being betraying villains.

Father Figures Whereas Dickens presents the melodramatic story of a sexual betrayal, with the father figure frantically seeking out the ‘fallen’ woman to bring her home, Gaskell presents a bittersweet story of disappointed love, with the father figure and his daughter remaining within the home. The story beyond the domestic realm is fraught with drama; that within is calmer, but nonetheless heart-rending. Early in the novel, David is told, ‘You have got a Pa…[a] new one!’ (Dickens 2000, 41), and his mother instructs him to ‘love [his] new father and be obedient to him’ (46). His mother makes two assumptions evident: firstly, that fatherhood is a social role and, as such, interchangeable between men, rather than a unique biological role, and secondly, that love and obedience are the inalienable duties of a son towards a father. Throughout the novel, Dickens makes reference to the importance of fatherhood; Steerforth tells David: ‘I tell you, my good fellow, once more, that it would have been well for me (and for more than me) if I had had a steadfast and judicious father!’ (299), thus making it clear that a great emphasis is placed on the father’s guidance and example during a son’s youth.

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Cousin Phillis similarly emphasises the importance of fatherhood. Paul opens his narrative with praise of his own father, describing him as ‘a mechanic by trade [with] some inventive genius, and a great deal of perseverance’ and then catches himself, noting, ‘But this is enough about my dear father’ but nevertheless continuing to discuss him (CP, 156). He links him to the nation—‘it is a good thing for a country where there are many like him’ (156)—and to a loving model of fatherhood: ‘though my father’s spoken maxim had been, “Spare the rod, and spoil the child”, yet, unconsciously, his heart had yearned after me, and his ways towards me were more tender than he knew, or would have approved of in himself could he have known’ (157). By prefacing the narrative about his cousin with such emphasis on his father, as if he cannot start until his own paternity is established, Paul emphasises the importance of the father figure. Throughout the narrative, Paul continues to uphold his father’s manliness and significance: ‘I chafed inwardly, thinking that my father needed no one to stand up for him. He was man sufficient for himself’ (172). The presence of Paul’s father in the novella is markedly different from the absence of David’s biological father and the relative unimportance of his ‘new’ father. This difference is a critical example of Gaskell’s taking aspects of Dickens’s novel and changing them to suit her purpose; the alteration underlines the greater importance she attaches to the role of the father. In the case of the Em’ly/Phillis plotline, the patriarchs also function quite differently. Whereas Em’ly’s father figure seeks to save her from pain, Phillis’s plays a part in her pain. Though Mr Peggotty is biologically Em’ly’s uncle, the fact that he acts as her father allows one to deem him her father; David states, ‘as I shall make it known to the honest man who has been her father from her childhood, I would recommend him to avoid going too much in public’ (Dickens 2000, 623). Dickens stresses that fatherhood is not merely a biological position but also a social role one plays; whereas the biological father’s status would begin at conception or birth, Dickens suggests that there is another type of father whose commencement could be dated to another time. Dickens also implies that notions of protection are intrinsic to the notion of the father, for one should fear the man who acts as Em’ly’s father. Mr Peggotty’s love for Em’ly is unconditional; he declares, ‘I’m a going to seek her, fur and wide. If she should come home while I’m away…or if I should bring her back, my meaning is, that she and me shall live and die where no one can’t reproach her. If any hurt should come

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to me, remember that the last words I left for her was, “My unchanged love is with my darling child, and I forgive her!”’ (437). This unqualified love, matched by his sense that nobody can criticise her under his watch, contrasts with that of Reverend Holman, who chastises his daughter for loving a man other than himself. Nevertheless, the fact that Mr Peggotty refers to Em’ly as a child resonates in Gaskell’s work, for both he and Holman continue to see their daughters (or daughter figures) as children. Cousin Phillis helps to make clear that Mr Peggotty’s unconditional love and forgiveness could stand to be criticised. In a novel preceding David Copperfield, Dombey and Son (1846–1848), Dickens uses the character of Florence Dombey to represent complete, unrelenting forgiveness, and yet the father she forgives neglects her and treats her cruelly. By revisiting the notion of ‘too much’ forgiveness, Dickens presents an all-forgiving father who could be read as an example of heroic fatherhood, as a deranged man with a one-track mind, or as a man who wishes away the sexuality of his daughter figure. Peggotty tells David that she believes Mr Peggotty1 is ‘broken-hearted’ and that ‘though he was as full of courage as of sweetness, and worked harder and better than any boat-builder in any yard in all that part’, there ‘were times…when he talked of their old life in the boat-house; and then he mentioned Emily as a child. But, he never mentioned her as a woman’ (683). In this instance, he stands as an ‘ideal’ man: a hard worker, simultaneously brave and tender, and capable of deep feeling, particularly for his family. At the same time, he never refers to Em’ly as a woman; ostensibly, he chooses to remember her in her sweet and innocent youth and not in her ‘fallen’ womanly state, yet the statement could also be read to show that he does not ever consider her as an adult. This reading resonates with Gaskell’s depiction of Reverend Holman, who similarly neglects to see Phillis as a woman. Whereas Dickens makes but a passing suggestion to the fact that Mr Peggotty thinks of Em’ly as a child, Gaskell draws attention to the fact that Holman infantilises Phillis. In this way, Gaskell draws out a critical reading of Mr Peggotty, recasting him as a character open to critique and exposing an unease in Mr Peggotty’s model of fatherhood; whereas Dickens allows readers to admire Mr Peggotty, Gaskell exposes the pathological side of failing to see one’s daughter growing up. Like Mr Peggotty, Holman is a strong worker; in some respects, Reverend Holman represents an ideal form of masculinity, merging science and religion, intellectual vigour and physical strength. When Paul Manning first meets him, he sees ‘a man in his shirt-sleeves, taller by the

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head than the other two with whom he was working’ and immediately thinks that he ‘must be confusing the figures, or mistaken: that man still looked like a very powerful labourer, and had none of the precise demureness of appearance which I had always imagined was the characteristic of a minister’ (CP, 167). His ‘grey hairs [betoken] no failure in strength’; Paul declares he ‘never saw a more powerful man—deep chest, lean flanks, well-planted head’ (167). Furthermore, whereas Paul is comfortable only with ‘the more practical subject of railroads’ (171) and is uneasy when Holman asks him questions ‘related to my acquirements or my reading’ (171), Holman has intellectual power as well as physical strength and stands for a broad range of knowledge, from religion, to the classics, to contemporary industrial concerns. Paul narrates, ‘Holdsworth was subdued by the minister’s uprightness and goodness, and delighted with his clear intellect—his strong healthy craving after further knowledge’ (203). This combination of intellect with moral attributes—uprightness and goodness—as well as with physical virility—strength, health, and appetite—keeps Holman from being classed as a bookish scholar out of touch with the natural world. Angus Easson notes that Holman’s country life, ‘uniting labour and prayer’, is ‘undisturbed by town or industry’ (Easson 1979, 221); that being said, though he is not engaged in industrial activity himself, he exhibits similar characteristics. Edgar Wright notes, ‘He has the energy and capacity for work of a successful industrialist, the intellectual curiosity and force of the new breed of self-made engineers’ (Wright 1965, 201). An amalgamation of the best qualities of urban and rural manliness, Holman ‘appears to be engaged in a program of rigorous self-help’ (Pettitt 1998, 481–482) and stands as ‘an epitome…of all Mrs Gaskell’s admired forebears’, taking after her grandfather Samuel Holland and her father William Stevenson (Gérin 1976, 236). Holman appears an idealised version of an industrious scholar, strong farmer, honest minister, and robust labourer; nevertheless, he fails as an ideal father. Just as Mr Peggotty thinks of ‘the child [Em’ly] had been’ (Dickens 2000, 544) rather than considering her as a woman, Holman treats Phillis as a child. In declaring, ‘Phillis! Did we not make you happy here? Have we not loved you enough?’ (CP, 237), Holman demonstrates signs of denying Phillis’s sexuality and womanhood, by infantilising her, by trying to make her feel guilty for having interests outside the home, and by exhibiting ‘disbelief that Phillis could have left him to follow another’ (Uglow 1993, 532). He keeps her in childish clothes, as Paul

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points out: ‘I could not help remembering the pinafore, the childish garment which Phillis wore so long, as if her parents were unaware of her progress towards womanhood’ (CP, 235–236). Francesco Marroni describes Reverend Holman’s ‘blindness’ as being ‘unable to see Phillis’s physical maturity and so the absurdity of her infantile dress’ (Marroni 2010a, 109). Holman refers to Phillis as a child, declaring, ‘So young, so pure from the world! how could you go and talk to such a child, rising hopes, exciting feelings’ (CP, 235), and Paul comments, ‘Just in the same way the minister spoke and thought of her now, as a child, whose innocent peace I had spoiled by vain and foolish talk’ (236). Holman’s infantilising cry is ‘the perennial lamentation of a father losing his offspring to the world at large’ (Sharps 1970, 439) and Foster notes, ‘Phillis is broken…by her father’s inability to accept her emotional independence, as his despairing cry makes clear’ (Foster 2002, 163). Uglow writes that Holman is ‘typically Victorian in his parental possessiveness and his belief…that a “good” woman’s sexuality does not exist until awakened’ (Uglow 1993, 549). If, as Uglow argues, Holdsworth did not give Phillis the ‘impetus to love’, Holman believes it was Paul who ‘put such thoughts into the child’s head’ and ‘spoil[ed] her peaceful maidenhood with talk about another man’s love’ (CP, 235). Indeed, Holman refuses to credit Phillis with agency, to realise that she might have had feelings for Holdsworth of her own accord; instead, he believes that Holdsworth must have ‘played tricks upon Phillis’ or ‘made love to her, courted her, made her think that he loved her, and then gone away and left her’ (234). Paul narrates, ‘I saw that his eyes were blazing with such a fire of anger at the bare idea’ (234), with Dickensian echoes, for when Mr Peggotty describes Em’ly’s escape and flight, he speaks ‘in stern wrath for the moment’ (Dickens 2000, 673). This anger in the father figure suggests rage towards the man who treated the female in this manner; both paternal men see the female as a child, and thus it is the man’s fault for her despair. Both men simultaneously worship and infantilise their daughters, and both girls literally cling to their father figures. David narrates, ‘Then I saw her, at her uncle’s side, and trembling on his shoulder. He pointed to us with an eager hand; and she saw us, and waved her last goodbye to me. Aye, Emily, beautiful and drooping, cling to him with the utmost trust of thy bruised heart; for he has clung to thee, with all the might of his great love!’ (Dickens 2000, 756). Here, Dickens stresses Em’ly’s weakness—she is trembling, drooping, and bruised—as well as

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Mr Peggotty’s love, his support, and the fact that there is some reciprocity in the fact that they both cling to each other, though in different ways. Likewise, Holman holds his daughter ‘almost as though she were a sleeping child’ and Paul notes, ‘He was trying to rise up with his poor precious burden, but the momentary terror had robbed the strong man of his strength, and he sank back in his chair with sobbing breath’ (CP, 237). Whereas Mr Peggotty works all the harder, Holman is weakened, physically and emotionally. There is no reciprocity, for not only is Phillis barely conscious, almost sleeping, but she is also treated as a child, without agency. Paul realises, ‘I think now that it was the recollection of what had gone before; the miserable thought that possibly his words had brought on this attack, whatever it might be, that so unmanned the minister’ (237–238); further, towards the end of the work, the minister is unable to speak: ‘We knelt down; we waited for the minister’s voice. He did not begin as usual. He could not; he was choking. Presently we heard the strong man’s sob’ (243). In this moment of seeing Holman ‘unmanned’, Gaskell suggests the destructive power of love and the way in which manly parental concern, if pushed too far, can in fact be a force of unmanning. In doing so, Gaskell reveals the dangers inherent in male reluctance to accept female autonomy, suggesting that a father’s feeling for his daughter can easily cross the boundaries of protective kindness, fearfulness, and ownership. Gaskell takes the representation of a physically strong, angry father in Dickens’s novel and mirrors it to highlight the ways in which this form of patriarchy is crippling towards women. Francesco Marroni notes that Holman’s exclamation of ‘Did we not make you happy’ shows ‘not only [his] blindness as pater familias but also a censorious attitude that makes Phillis feel guilty of having betrayed her parents’ expectations’ (Marroni 2010a, 112). This blind love echoes the blind paternal love that Em’ly receives in David Copperfield, but by giving it more attention, Gaskell emphasises the dangers of such love. Shirley Foster writes of the theme of paternal oppression: ‘Holman’s almost obsessive love for his daughter and desire to keep her a child are shown to be as destructive as the more violent tyranny of some of the other fathers in Gaskell’s fiction’ (Foster 2002, 163). Foster argues, ‘Wholly trustful of Holdsworth’s intentions, Phillis is broken not only by the news that he has married someone else but also by her father’s inability to accept her emotional independence, as his despairing cry makes clear’ (163). Likewise, Williams shows that,

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similar to Briar Rose or Sleeping Beauty, Phillis is in a ‘state of fairytale imprisonment’ yet hers is ‘parentally-induced, rather than a fairy’s curse’, and results in anything but a fairytale ending: ‘it leads to a female’s emotional and physical breakdown’ (Williams 2010, 101). More broadly, Hansson argues that Gaskell ‘clearly indicates that women are emotionally and intellectually crippled in patriarchal societies’ (Hansson 2008, 422). That being said, as Marroni points out, though Gaskell critiques his patriarchal role, she does not destroy it or present an alternative: ‘Interestingly enough, the climax of “Cousin Phillis” defines an image of patriarchal authority that is rather contradictory. While the negativity of the role of Phillis’s father in terms of her psychological and social growth is dramatized, he is eventually reinstated as a pivot of family life’ (Marroni 2010a, 118). In this way, as in Mary Barton (1848) and North and South (1854), Gaskell does not seek to overthrow the social system; she criticises facets of her contemporary society and seeks to represent reality faithfully. In domesticating a sensational plotline, she shows the dangers of that type of fatherhood existing in everyday life and creates a realistic critique and a balanced portrayal of the system of patriarchy that infantilises girls and thus causes them emotional and physical harm.

Conclusion Other critics have remarked upon intertextualities between Cousin Phillis and other literary works, from Rasselas (cf. Sharps 1970, 432) to Virgil (cf. Easson 1979, 222; Uglow 1993, 542). Moreover, Hansson notes that the intertexts in the novella all pertain to male writers: Virgil, Dante, Manzoni, Caesar, Horace, and Ovid (Hansson 2008, 427). Though perhaps less obvious, Dickens should be placed within that list. The similarities in affectionate and hero-adulating male narrators, enchanting handsome suitors, and worshipping and infantilising fathers strongly suggest that Gaskell chose to rework Dickens’s male characters, displacing them from a melodramatic setting of sexual betrayal to a realist domestic scene of quietly tragic disappointment. With emphasis through names such as Holman and Manning, Gaskell highlights the fact that she is writing self-consciously about masculinity and that the emotional anguish and physical damage result from the contemporary construction of masculinity, far more than from the sensational elements of Dickens’s plot. Whether careless or ill-intentioned, loving or heartless, these friends, suitors, and fathers create tales of tragedy.

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Note 1. Readers should note that Mr Peggotty is Peggotty’s brother; Peggotty’s husband is Mr Barkis.

CHAPTER 6

Historic Masculinities in Sylvia’s Lovers

As many critics have remarked, Sylvia’s Lovers (1863) is Gaskell’s first major novel not set in her own time or her own geographic surroundings (Craik 1975, 143; Sanders 1929, 118). This turn to history is not unusual for Gaskell; as Angus Easson notes, many of her short stories written after her biography of Charlotte Brontë—including ‘The Poor Clare’, ‘Lois the Witch’, and ‘The Grey Woman’ (Easson 1979, 159)— are historical, but not in the sense of Walter Scott’s historical fiction. Though Scott and Gaskell both focus on ‘faithful rendition of the local dialect’ (Sharps 1997, 20), Easson argues that like Eliot in Adam Bede (1859), set in the 1790s, Gaskell challenges Scott’s genre of historical fiction by ‘writing of a period of upheaval and great event’ but making that action ‘peripheral’ since most people are ‘not excitingly involved in history’s great events’ (160). Similarly, Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1847– 1848) presents a time of war to a readership in a time of peace and focuses on cultural shifts and changes rather than political events. This trajectory continues in Hardy’s The Trumpet Major (1880), which focuses not on its epoch—the Napoleonic Wars—but on three suitors of a country girl. These novels and their focus on common people make it clear that ‘history’ is more than biographies of great men. Though political events may happen ‘off-stage’ in the novel, cultural changes do happen, and historical fiction allows Gaskell to explore social changes, particularly with regard to gender.

© The Author(s) 2020 M. Lowe, Masculinity in the Work of Elizabeth Gaskell, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48397-5_6

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Frances Twinn argues that Sylvia’s Lovers is both a historical novel and a ‘geographical novel’ (Twinn 2001, 51), with the sea mirroring the wild, uncontrollable Monkshaven people, who seem inspired by Gaskell’s research in Haworth. Similarly, Louise Henson points out the Brontëan similarities: ‘Gaskell defined both Haworth and Monkshaven in relation to contemporary models of more primitive stages of civilisation’; both are ‘pre-industrial…isolated…independent and economically self-sufficient’, and both are ‘wild’, ‘heathen’, and ‘rough’ (Henson 2002, 44). This interest in the ‘primitive’—and its associations with wild, brutal societies—is one in which anthropologists would shortly thereafter invest, as Edward Burnett Tylor’s Primitive Culture was published in 1871. Tylor proposes that societies go through three stages of development (savagery, barbarism, and civilisation) and argues that, just as species evolve and just as children progress towards adulthood, societies are involved in gradual progress through social evolution (Tucker 1999, 43–44). By leaving industrial Manchester and going back in time and to remote fishing villages, Gaskell seeks the ‘primitive’ in rough, passionate people who were somehow less ‘evolved’ or ‘advanced’; she writes, ‘among a primitive set of country-folk, who recognize the wild passion in love, as it exists untamed by the trammels of reason and self-restraint, any story of baulked affections, or treachery in such matters, spreads like wildfire’ (SL, 386). Gaskell is critical of the wild passions of the Brontë sisters’ novels, and whereas she could use her Life of Charlotte Brontë to domesticate the image of Charlotte as a woman, she could use Sylvia’s Lovers to explore the ‘primitive’ passions of men like Heathcliff and then domesticate them. In exploring the primitive in a spatial and chronological sense, Gaskell opens up questions of progress and that which is left behind; specifically, she examines models of ‘primitive’ masculinity and those that replace them. Rather than addressing macroscopic changes as societies progress from barbarism to civilisation, she takes a microscopic look at the nineteenth-century self-made man. Working in this new historic and geographic territory, Gaskell familiarised herself with Yorkshire people and history, talking to locals on a trip to Whitby (Sharps 1970, 373–374), where she interviewed Sir Charles Napier, a former commander of the Channel Fleet, and General Perronet Thompson about press-gangs (Sanders 1929, 118). Upon returning from Whitby, she had her husband borrow William Scoresby’s An Account of the Arctic Regions, with a History and Description of the Northern Whale Fishery (1820) in November 1859 and again in May 1860, along with

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his Journal of a Voyage to the Northern Whale-Fishery (1823) (Healy 2017, A70, A74), and she used Scoresby’s account when writing about whaling exploits in Sylvia’s Lovers (Gérin 1976, 211; Foster 2000, 20). This research emphasises Gaskell’s interest in historic accuracy, particularly of whalers, sailors, and impressment: a turn to historic Whitby offers her a turn to sea-faring and military masculinity. Rather than explore current issues of military valour, English national heroism, and imperial manliness in contemporary India, Gaskell remains more vested in home life than that abroad, and Whitby allows her to explore an older manly heroism domestically.1 Regarding this heroism, Graham Dawson argues: The solider hero has proved to be one of the most durable and powerful forms of idealized masculinity within Western cultural traditions…Military virtues such as aggression, strength, courage and endurance have repeatedly been defined as the natural and inherent qualities of manhood, whose apogee is attainable only in battle…[T]he soldier has become a quintessential figure of masculinity…A dominant conception of masculine identity—the true ‘Englishman’—was both required and underpinned by the dominant version of British national identity in such a way that each reinforced the other. Within nationalist discourse, martial masculinity was complemented by a vision of domestic femininity, at home with the children and requiring protection. The nation itself came to be conceived as a gendered entity, analysis of which is necessarily bound up with the theorizing of dominant, hegemonic versions of masculinity, femininity and sexual difference. (Dawson 1994, 1–2)

As Dawson makes clear, ‘soldier heroes’ are crucial to notions of the nation, domesticity, and gender, and Gaskell’s choice of historic time and location allows her to examine frameworks of masculinity relating to military heroism. By using the realm of historic fiction, Gaskell is able to examine military masculinity as well as economic and social change through depicting the ‘rival economic commercialism established in Monkshaven [and] the corresponding decline of the traditional cultural values of the whaling community’ (Henson 2002, 44). This economic opposition is matched by a contrast of emotions, which Henson characterises as the ‘restrained but harsh moral judgements of the Quakers’ versus the ‘the instinctive and passionate feelings of the specksioneers’ (44). On an individual level,

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the rivalry is played out between opposing lovers, Charley Kinraid and Philip Hepburn. The pattern of two markedly different lovers is not uncommon. It is a recurring trope in writing about Scotland, with the Highlander and Jacobite suitor presented in opposition to the Lowlander and supporter of George; one man is seen as wild or ‘primitive’ and one as smooth and ‘civilised’, and these opposing lovers are often brothers, as in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Master of Ballantrae (1889). Likewise, parallels to Wuthering Heights (1847) are clear, with Heathcliff and Edgar Linton serving as foils for each other. La Princesse de Clèves (1678) likewise features a heroine who married a ‘staid’ suitor while loving a ‘handsome, brave, dashing, adventurous hero, pre-eminent in daring and manly prowess, but an outrageous philanderer’ (Yarrow 1993, 31). Similarities to Crabbe’s poem, ‘Ruth’ (1819), have also been drawn, as one lover’s abduction by a press-gang is followed by ‘the subsequent successful wooing of a less desired lover’, also named Philip (Foster 2000, 20). Shirley Foster also notes Gaskell’s interest in tales of disappearance and misunderstanding, with former lovers returning after the heroine is married: she borrows Caroline Norton’s Stuart of Dunleath (1851) from the Portico Library twice, as well as Anne Marsh Caldwell’s Ravenscliffe (1851) (Foster 2000, 21), and she herself uses the trope of the returned sailor in ‘The Manchester Marriage’ (1858), which Edgar Wright argues could have been Tennyson’s inspiration for ‘Enoch Arden’ (1864) (Wright 1965, 178 fn24). Though grounded in literary precedent, Sylvia’s Lovers marks a geographical and historical departure from Gaskell’s own work; however, many critics have over-emphasised its divergence. Wendy Craik stresses that this novel is the ‘first time [Gaskell] casts aside any social theme to study the personal progress [of characters who] offer different degrees of influence, sympathy, and understanding’ (Craik 1975, 179). Social themes are not, however, entirely cast aside; historical change allows Gaskell to examine social change and manliness through a new lens. Edgar Wright notes that this novel ‘was the first time that she made love the central issue of a major novel’ for in North and South, the love story was linked to themes of social change (Wright 1965, 184). Likewise, Gerald Sanders points out that whereas Mary Barton, Ruth, and North and South deal with social and ethical issues, in Sylvia’s Lovers , love ‘transcends all other interests’ (Sanders 1929, 123). Though love is at the forefront of the novel, Gaskell’s novel is not just a love story: social issues

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still play a large role. Arthur Pollard emphasises that though the pressgang would have been morally condemned in her earlier novels, Gaskell allows ‘[s]traightforward account and dramatisation…to do its own work’ (Pollard 1967, 202); one could argue, too, that in turning to historic issues, Gaskell does not need to take a condemnatory stance. Though the topics of social change may not be as urgent as they were in her industrial novels, and though it is not polemical or investigative, Sylvia’s Lovers is still grounded in issues of social change, which Gaskell uses to explore different cultural styles of masculinity. By pitting a harpooner against a man selling ribbons and by exploring heroism and generational gender differences, Gaskell makes it clear that she is still vested in notions of manly work and manliness. From the title alone, Gaskell sets up Sylvia’s Lovers as a tale of multiple masculinities. The original title, The Specksiooner (Letters , 595)—the term for a chief harpooner—focused on Kinraid and his dashing career; it eventually changed to Philip’s Idol (Letters , 920), focused instead on Philip and his treatment of Sylvia. This change reflects Gaskell’s change in emphasis, or as Gérin puts it, her ‘growing preoccupation with Philip’s obsessive and self-destructive love for Sylvia’ (Gérin 1976, 220). Though Edgar Wright is unsatisfied with the final title, Sylvia’s Lovers , claiming that the ‘lovers are secondary to Sylvia herself’ and that Philip’s Idol ‘throw[s] light on important aspects’ (Wright 1965, 189), one could argue that, in naming Sylvia rather than either man, the title concentrates on her. Further, it throws light on one of the most important aspects of all: unlike earlier titles, it alludes to both men rather than only one. The two models of manliness are not just juxtaposed but are in direct competition, two lovers vying for the attention and affection of the same woman. In addition to Philip Hepburn, a steady, hard-working shopkeeper, and Charley Kinraid, a dashing, adventurous sailor, the title could also perhaps evoke Daniel Robson, the first model of masculinity whom Sylvia would have loved and to whom both the romantic lovers are compared.

The Father Figure Gaskell uses the realm of historical fiction to depict society a few generations prior: not so distant as to be indistinguishable from her own time but distant enough to allow time for significant change. On the one hand, in presenting historic forms of masculinity, Gaskell has the space to explore questions of an ahistorical masculinity—particularly aggressive masculinity—that could underlie both earlier and later social mores and

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surface in impassioned, individualist cultures as well as prudent, social ones. On the other hand, one of the crucial factors of this change in time is that it allows her to focus on how contemporary gender roles came about; with a Darwinian outlook on progress, variation must occur, and one variety must be preferred or favoured in some way. Within this competition of which type of man will ‘win’—either in terms of Sylvia’s heart or in terms of social capital—Gaskell presents, as contrast, the typical ‘preferred’ man of the previous generation. In order to show progress, she first shows the foundation from which these models of manliness have evolved and by which they are judged: Sylvia’s father, Daniel Robson. From the beginning, Daniel is presented as infantile: ‘Daniel resented being treated like a child, and yet turned his back on Philip with all the wilfulness of one…Daniel pretended not to listen at first, and made ostentatious noises with his spoon and glass’ (SL, 38). Gaskell later emphasises his childish nature: Daniel was very like a child in all the parts of his character. He was strongly affected by whatever was present, and apt to forget the absent. He acted on impulse, and too often had reason to be sorry for it; but he hated his sorrow too much to let it teach him wisdom for the future. With all his many faults, however, he had something in him which made him be dearly loved, both by the daughter whom he indulged, and the wife who was in fact superior to him, but whom he imagined that he ruled with a wise and absolute sway. (247)

Though she does not explicitly label him as primitive, by focusing on Daniel’s childish state, Gaskell underscores the undeveloped aspect of Daniel’s character; just as Tylor would suggest that primitive cultures could progress towards civilisation as children progress towards adulthood, Gaskell suggests that it is not just the individual man who is childish but rather that this impulsive, unthinking type of masculinity is at a lower stage of progress and requires change. In particular, he needs to progress from instinctual, base emotions to abstract, forward-thinking thought. Gaskell draws attention to the gap between Daniel’s lack of wisdom and his perceived wise rule; any superiority over his wife is no more than imaginary child’s play, suggesting that his view of gender relations will likewise need to progress. After highlighting the need for a more developed model of masculinity, Gaskell follows this paragraph directly with one that presents two options: Philip’s model and Kinraid’s:

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Love to Sylvia gave Philip tact. He seemed to find out that to please the women of the household he must pay all possible attention to the man; and though he cared little in comparison for Daniel, yet this autumn he was continually thinking of how he could please him. When he had said or done anything to gratify or amuse her father, Sylvia smiled and was kind…Still his progress was slow…Then in his dreams he saw Kinraid again, sometimes struggling, sometimes sailing towards land, the only one on board a swift advancing ship, alone on deck, stern and avenging; till Philip awoke in remorseful terror. (247–248)

It is clear that Philip does not align with Daniel’s model of manliness. Philip is tactful, attentive, aiming to please, and subservient to the wishes of others. Unlike Daniel, Philip is capable of forward-thinking thought and could thus represent a more progressive model of manliness; he is, however, affected to the point of terror by the imagined other man. Even though Kinraid here is merely imagined, he is active: struggling, sailing, avenging. In other words, he is the essence of manly action. Daniel sides with Kinraid’s manliness, as both come from the shared background of whaling. Daniel’s ‘blood warmed, as he told the specksioneer [Kinraid], towards a sailor’ (90); in contrast, he tells Philip, ‘thou’rt little better nor a woman, for sure, bein’ mainly acquaint wi’ ribbons’ (207). In opposition to Philip’s careful attentions to Daniel to win over Sylvia, Daniel and Kinraid both tell whaling stories, which, as Jenny Uglow points out, are a form of hunting themselves, since both Bell and Sylvia are won by them, ‘won by the very violence of the men’ (Uglow 1993, 517). Indeed, Daniel boasts of having ‘won’ his wife (SL, 131) and winks at Kinraid, telling him, ‘Yo’ may learn t’ way of winnin’ t’ women’ (105), echoing Othello’s declaration that he ‘won’ Desdemona by his stories: ‘She loved me for the dangers I had pass’d. And I loved her that she did pity them. This only is the witchcraft I have used’ (Shakespeare 2005, I.3.94; I.3.167–8). Just as Desdemona listens ‘with a greedy ear’ and ‘devour[s] up [his] discourse’ (I.3.148–9), Sylvia is ‘greedy and breathless’ and ‘gazing at Kinraid with fascinated wonder’ when he tells stories (SL, 103); likewise, when Daniel tells stories about Kinraid, ‘her cheeks had flushed up, and her eyes had glittered during the progress of the tale’ (56). Daniel and Kinraid both cast themselves as heroes in these sensational and seductive tales of freedom and adventure at sea, and this type of heroic manliness enchants and enraptures Sylvia, as it did her mother. Though these women may be ‘won’ by the dangerous stories,

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echoes of Othello’s jealousy, passion, and violence unsettle that image of enchanting masculinity. In contrast to the men telling wild and miraculous tales, Philip and Bell, Sylvia’s mother, ‘seem to embody the gendered values of silence and cold, rational calculation’ (Marroni 2010b, 166). Gaskell makes it clear that Daniel supports Kinraid’s model of masculinity and endorses him as Sylvia’s husband and thus as his replacement as the next man of power in her life; more broadly, she makes it clear that patriarchal power influences the next generation and thus has great influence over social change in general. Gaskell details Daniel’s reaction to Kinraid asking for Sylvia’s hand in marriage: And, perhaps, the elder man was not unprepared for the communication that followed. At any rate, it was not unwelcome. He liked Kinraid, and had strong sympathy not merely with what he knew of the young sailor’s character, but with the life he led, and the business he followed. Robson listened to all he said with approving nods and winks, till Charley had told him everything he had to say; and then he turned and struck his broad horny palm into Kinraid’s as if concluding a bargain, while he expressed in words his hearty consent to their engagement. He wound up with a chuckle, as the thought struck him that this great piece of business, of disposing of their only child, had been concluded while his wife was away. (SL, 197)

His paternal approval hinges not only on individual character but also on the type of manliness represented; Daniel approves of a sailor’s business, in contrast to Philip’s association with ribbons. Further, Daniel’s winking and nodding emphasises his enjoyment of male bonding and homosocial activity, in contrast to his complaints about women talking too much. Gaskell makes it clear, though, that this type of masculinity is outdated. Firstly, Daniel laughs at the thought of his wife’s reaction, suggesting a patronising attitude towards women; secondly, to him, only paternal approval matters, not maternal; thirdly, he sees marriage as a ‘great piece of business’, a ‘bargain’; and fourthly, he views Sylvia as being ‘disposed of’—not just an object in a business transaction but one that had been inconveniencing him and was in need of disposal. Gaskell’s attention to Daniel’s calloused, working hands and to the handshake and the transaction it entails is mirrored in her attention to Sylvia’s and Kinraid’s hands in the scene directly preceding it, when Kinraid tells Sylvia of his love. When Kinraid enters the house, Sylvia knocks her mending off the table, and in helping her to pick up the stockings, ‘he had fast hold of

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her hand, and her face was turned away, half ready to cry’ (194). Kinraid actively seeks out Sylvia’s hand, and though she is obviously emotional, her physical action betrays an uneasiness to face Kinraid directly and an unevenness in their dynamic. As she continues to evade his gaze, she likewise evades his touch: ‘she lifted up her head, and all but looking at him—while she wrenched her hand out of his’ (194). Hers is not a simple rejection but a jarring, forceful wrenching. In response, Kinraid ‘made no effort to repossess himself of her hand’ (195). Though Kinraid has come to speak of love, Gaskell’s language is not of tender touches or affectionate hand-holding but of repossession, of viewing Sylvia’s hand as if it were property to be reclaimed. Further, his wording of ‘my love toward her is so great and mighty’ (195) resonates with this disjuncture, for it is as if he is describing a ship rather than his love. When Sylvia declares that she did not know Kinraid loved her, he is again met with physical resistance—‘he was back at her side, his arm round her in spite of her short struggle’ (195)—as well as emotional resistance, for she again hides her face from him: ‘she was crying; and on his turning her wet blushing face towards him the better to look at it, she suddenly hid it in his breast’ (195). Significantly, the only moment in this exchange where Sylvia does not reject Kinraid’s physical touch is when he adopts a maternal stance: ‘He lulled and soothed her in his arms, as if she had been a weeping child and he her mother; and then they sat down on the settle together, and when she was more composed they began to talk’ (195). Though this passage could be interpreted negatively, with his infantilising of her, it is equally important to note that Gaskell privileges the feminine touch, for it is met with acceptance and composure. Though Kinraid may win the approval of the previous masculine representative in Sylvia’s life, that is not to say that he can succeed without adapting his behaviour; Gaskell makes it clear that Kinraid’s aggressive, physical pursuit of Sylvia’s body is not supported and that a more maternal masculinity is necessary for him to ‘win’ Sylvia. Further, Daniel’s endorsement of Kinraid is not unconditional. Over time, Gaskell makes it clear that ‘even Daniel had turned against the specksioneer, irritated by the Corneys’ loud moans over the loss of the man to whom their daughter said that she was attached’ (246); in contrast, as his wife points out, Philip has ‘niver thought on a woman but our Sylvie’ (247). Further, Daniel remarks, ‘t’ shop’s doin’ a vast o’ business, I’ve heard say. He’s a deal better company, too, nor he used to be. He’d a way o’ preaching wi’ him as a couldn’t abide; but now he tak’s his

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glass, an’ holds his tongue, leavin’ room for wiser men to have their say’ (247). In contrast to Kinraid’s swaggering tales, Philip’s silence is seen as positive; manly silence itself is not endorsed, however, but rather silence that allows Daniel—and his ‘imagined’ wisdom—to be heard. Daniel’s change of opinion is significant for, Gaskell writes, ‘Philip was gaining ground with Daniel, and that was something towards winning Sylvia’s heart; for she was unaware of her father’s change of feeling towards Kinraid [assuming Daniel to have] sympathy in her loss, instead of which he was rather feeling as if it might be a good thing after all that the ficklehearted sailor was dead and drowned’ (247). The fact that the change in the father’s opinion provokes a change in the daughter’s opinion (albeit a slightly misguided one) emphasises that the cause for Philip’s ‘winning’ Sylvia comes from patriarchal power and influence: the former man of power in Sylvia’s life will influence the choice of his successor, in the form of a husband. By detailing how, individually, Daniel’s opinion affects Philip’s fate, Gaskell shows how, generally, the old model of masculinity affects the new one. Daniel’s change of heart regarding Philip is due to his faithfulness to Sylvia and his deference to him, as well as to the fact that his shop is vastly successful. That paternal approval hinges, in part, on finances recalls Barbara Leigh Smith’s and Mary Wollstonecraft’s outcries that marriage is ‘legal prostitution’, as the daughter is passed from the father to the husband, forced to be ever dependent on others for financial support (cf. Wollstonecraft 2008, 229). Gaskell is less extreme; she deems Barbara Leigh Smith ‘a strong fighter against the established opinions of the world,—which always goes against my—what shall I call it?—taste—(that is not the word,) but I can’t help admiring her noble bravery, and respecting—while I don’t personally like her’ (Letters , 607).2 Thus, although Sylvia herself is not critical of this pattern of paternal endorsement—in fact, she likes Philip more because Daniel does—Gaskell is critical of Daniel’s attitude towards women. Gaskell repeatedly emphasises that Daniel’s mode of manliness is disparaging to women. He ‘did not acknowledge’ that his wife ‘was a touch better educated than her husband’ (SL, 43), and the narrator pushes readers to question his views with comments such as ‘This was too original a remark for a wife to make in Daniel’s opinion, on this especial morning, when his rheumatism was twinging him more than usual, so he replied with severity’ (49) and ‘Women’s well enough i’ their way…but a man may have too much on ’em…it’s th’ being wi’ nought but women as tires me so: they talk so foolish it gets int’ t’ bones like’ (49). Daniel’s

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opposition to women’s education, originality, and speech marks an opposition to progress for women’s rights, and Gaskell makes it clear that this type of masculinity has no place in Victorian society, for she expels Daniel from the space of the text. Daniel’s version of masculinity is not just negative; it is damaging to women, as depicted by his wife’s internalisation of this treatment: ‘She really believed her husband to have the serious and important occupation for his mind that she had been taught to consider befitting the superior intellect of the masculine gender; she would have taxed herself severely if, even in thought, she had blamed him’ (125). Daniel’s intellect is not, however, advanced: ‘though he could read pretty well, yet the double effort of reading and understanding what he read was almost too much for him. He could read, or he could understand what was read aloud to him; reading was no pleasure, but listening was’ (95). Gaskell sets Daniel up as a man of a different time as well as of a different educational background to that with which her readers would be familiar, so that she can have the job of explaining why he scorns the company of women: All this was addressed to Daniel, to whom she knew that none but masculine company would be acceptable. Amongst uneducated people—whose range of subjects and interest do not extend beyond their daily life—it is natural that when the first blush and hurry of youth is over, there should be no great pleasure in the conversation of the other sex. Men have plenty to say to men, which in their estimation (gained from tradition and experience) women cannot understand; and farmers of a much later date than the one of which I am writing, would have contemptuously considered it as a loss of time to talk to women… (88)

Gaskell makes it clear that it is not only prejudice but also ‘tradition and experience’ that leads these men to belittle the conversation of women. She emphasises that this difference is only partly due to the difference in time period, for farmers much later hold similar views. Instead, what is key is the difference in education; while in Mary Barton she emphasises that education is necessary for sympathy to be productive for industrial working relations, here she stresses that education is key to more sympathetic gender relations. Indeed, the Victorians in general and Unitarians in particular laid more emphasis on companionate marriage than did earlier generations; Unitarians maintained that husband and wife should be equally educated in order to have a happy marriage as otherwise ‘the man

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would truly be marrying “beneath himself”’ (Watts 2013, 37). Gaskell’s friend and fellow Unitarian, Harriet Martineau, writes, ‘Let woman then be taught that her powers of mind were given her to be improved. Let her be taught that she is to be a rational companion to those of the other sex among whom her lot in life is cast, that her proper sphere is home—that there she is to provide, not only for the bodily comfort of the man, but that she is to enter also into community of mind with him’ (Martineau 1985, 93). Unitarians believed that through this ‘community of mind’, marriage could aid progress and improvement in both husband and wife. Daniel’s opposition, therefore, to female company is not only out-dated but also injurious to both male and female intellectual improvement. In North and South, male friendships—between Thornton and Higgins and between Thornton and Mr Hale, for example—are seen as valuable, helping to resolve class and regional conflicts; however, neither friendship requires the exclusion or contempt of women. Similarly, Philip is not excluded from women but rather works alongside them. Gaskell thus trivialises Daniel’s male friendships by emphasising their exclusivity. John Tosh explains ‘the power of domesticity against the culture of male friendship’, arguing that the ‘rise of companionate marriage’, with increasing ‘time spent at home, and the expectation that there should be trust and openness between spouses, undermined the quality of other friendships’ (Tosh 2007, 126). Gaskell does not appear to mourn the loss of male friendships, instead emphasising how harmful restricted gender spheres can be. She would likely align with John Stuart Mill’s description in The Subjection of Women (1869) of the ‘ideal of marriage’, the opposite of which is ‘primitive barbarism’: ‘two persons of cultivated faculties, identical in opinions and purposes, between whom there exists the best kind of equality, similarity of powers and capacities with reciprocal superiority’ (Mill 2008, 575). Whereas Philip tries to teach Sylvia reading and geography and is thus more in line with egalitarian companionate relationships, Daniel is related to the ‘primitive’ in his opposition to such equality. Gaskell makes it clear that this old model of masculinity needs to change. Daniel values action over intellect as a ‘man of his active habits, and somewhat inactive mind’ (SL, 45). Further, she notes, ‘[Sylvia] thought of her father—his sharp passions, his frequent forgiveness, or rather his forgetfulness that he had even been injured. All Sylvia’s persistent or enduring qualities were derived from her mother, her impulses from her father’ (334). Though Gaskell values sympathy and forgiveness, the fact that Daniel’s forgiveness comes from forgetfulness rather than

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from a moral or religious foundation is telling. His foolish behaviour and lack of forethought ultimately prove destructive. He is ‘unreasoning, hasty, impulsive—in a word, often thinking and acting very foolishly’; nevertheless, he is the ‘arbiter and law-giver on his household’ and ‘[o]n his decision, as that of husband, father, master, perhaps superior natures waited’ (281). Gaskell emphasises that his authority comes not from any intelligence or superiority but rather only from his status as male: husband, father, and master. The fact that such an unthinking man has such power is dangerous; Gaskell herself notes in a letter, ‘I long (weakly) for the old times where right and wrong did not seem such complicated matters; and I am sometimes coward enough to wish that we were back in the darkness where obedience was the only seen duty of women. Only even then I don’t believe William would ever have commanded me’ (Letters , 108); it is clear that, though she sees the past—and past gender relations—somewhat nostalgically, she qualifies this nostalgia with ‘weakly’ and ‘coward’ and makes it clear that, even though she may wish to avoid being complicit in decisions—here she feels guilty for buying a large house while cognisant of the poverty around her—she is not sympathetic to the notion of commanding men. Daniel is impulsive and authoritative in the domestic sphere; in the public sphere, he is impulsive and resists authority, seeking ‘justice [and] self-determined liberty’ (d’Albertis 1997, 114). Like John Barton, his views against authority lead him to commit a rash crime. Further, like John, as Wendy Craik notes, he has a ‘strong sense of justice and injustice to individuals’ but is ‘incapable of conceiving abstract morality or law, or justice on a larger scale’ (Craik 1975, 162) and thus becomes a helpless and ‘pathetic victim of forces he cannot even understand’ (191). Daniel’s resistance to authority is exhibited on his hands, which he maimed to avoid the press-gang. When speaking, Daniel’s very face changes as he says the word ‘press-gang’, altering to show ‘a steady passion of old hatred’ (SL, 38). He deems them a ‘daumed gang’ and declares he is ‘none ashamed o’ [his] words’ for he can prove them by showing his hand: ‘Where’s my forefinger? Ay! and as good a top-joint of a thumb as iver a man had?’. He declares that he wished he had preserved them in spirits ‘just to show t’ lass what flesh and bone I made away wi’ to get free. I ups wi’ a hatchet when I saw as I were fast a-board a mano’-war standing out for sea’ (38). Daniel takes pride in ‘exhibiting his maimed hand’ as means of avoiding ‘t’ Ameriky war’: ‘her father never made a new acquaintance but what he told him of his self-mutilation to

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escape the press-gang’ (89), and he ‘lifted up his right hand—his hand on which the forefinger and thumb were maimed and useless—partly in denunciation, and partly as a witness of what he had endured to escape from the service, abhorred because it was forced’ (52). In permanently disfiguring himself, Daniel disqualifies himself from the pursuit of daring, heroic manhood: It had been done, as he would himself have owned, to spite himself as well as them; for it had obliged him to leave a sea-life, to which, in comparison, all life spent on shore was worse than nothing for dulness. For Robson had never reached that rank aboard ship which made his being unable to run up the rigging, or to throw a harpoon, or to fire off a gun, of no great consequence; so he had to be thankful that an opportune legacy enabled him to turn farmer, a great degradation in his opinion. (89–90)

Though it is clear that Daniel resists authority, it is equally clear that he had not reached a high level of authority himself on the ship; for that reason, his resistance to the authority of the press-gang results not only in the mutilation of his hand but also the destruction of his adventurous lifestyle. Deirdre d’Albertis notes the ‘preponderance of mutilated bodies in the text: from Robson’s amputated digits to Philip’s scorched frame’ and argues that it ‘self-reflexively proclaims the violence and fragmentation engendered by the author’s attempt to rewrite history through experiments in generic fiction’, for she ‘failed to appropriate Scott’s model or recreate the Waverley novels’ and created a ‘an entirely new (if conflicted) type of narrative…a self-contradictory hybrid of literary forms and conventions’ through ‘[m]utilation of narrative form’ (d’Albertis 1997, 135). Gaskell’s mutilation of form does not, however, mark a support for mutilation of body, for ‘mutiny or mendacity’, for ‘impulse to resist unjust power…in an act either of violent assertion or dissembling fabrication’ (d’Albertis 1997, 136). Indeed, Gaskell’s criticism of Daniel’s form of resistance is made even more explicit by the way in which she banishes him from the text following his involvement in an anti-press-gang riot. Daniel helps rescue ‘nine or ten honest chaps as was pressed’ (SL, 268), and he is involved in ‘[d]emolishing and pulling down, destroying and burning dwelling-houses and outhouses’ (286). He makes one more attempt at bodily evading authority, hiding under the

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bed, but he is not able to avoid imprisonment in York and, eventually, hanging. Like John Barton, Daniel evokes sympathy before he dies; even the opposing lawyer feels concern for the ‘misguided rioters’ (286) and offers advice to Philip. Philip notes that Daniel is a ‘poor ignorant creature’ who ‘said this world had been too strong for him, and men too hard upon him’ and who is upset when, at trial, the lawyers ‘made him speak, against his will, he says’ (332); Sylvia’s response—‘Couldn’t he ha’ bitten his tongue out?’—emphasises that her father has imbued in her the idea of a liberatory potential in corporeal mutilation as a means to resist authority. Philip’s dismissive reply—‘Well, anyhow he’s sorry now…’ (332)—underlines the fruitless nature of this type of resistance. Though his defiance is futile and ultimately self-destructive, he is well-remembered: ‘her father had lost his life in a popular cause, and ignominious as the manner of his death might be, he was looked upon as a martyr to his zeal in avenging the wrongs of his townsmen’ (407). He is a martyr, however, who does not belong in Victorian society; just as Shakespeare’s resolute individualists Shylock and Malvolio are unassimilable and thus expelled from their texts, Daniel’s expulsion is necessary, for his model of unthinking, violent rebelliousness is not assimilable. He dies the way he lived: radically. Gaskell makes it clear that this radicalism has no place in contemporary society. Thus, Daniel joins John Barton and Mr Hale in Gaskell’s line of fathers expelled from her texts by death.

The Two Lovers Having set up a model of masculinity that previous generations revered and martyrised, Gaskell presents two opposing models of masculinity for the next generation; not only are they oppositional in their contrasting characters, but both are also competing for Sylvia’s heart—and the approval of her father. The shopkeeper Philip is associated with the town and with trade, religion, and education; he is serious, cold, unromantic, and grounded in common sense. In contrast, the harpooner Kinraid is bold, fiery, dashing, fearless, and heroic, associated with impulse, instinct, the sea, adventure, and danger. The handsome whaler captivates women with his confident stories but is also noted to be a libertine; as Angus Easson notes, he embodies a ‘full animal life into which fine moral distinctions never enter’ (Easson 1979, 176). Each aspect of the men is in opposition; as

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Francesco Marroni notes, both their ‘personalities and cultures are antithetic’ (Marroni 2010b, 164), for ‘[t]he confined and routinary space of Philip’s everyday existence is set in contrast with the limitless and adventurous spatial dimensions of the harpooner’s life at sea’ (169). Jenny Uglow compellingly suggests that the ‘argument of Gaskell’s novels always proceeds through dialectic’ and argues that the ‘collision of opposites’—with Philip and Sylvia, Sylvia and Hester, Philip and Kinraid, and Bell and Daniel Robson—implies ‘permanent, almost genetic oppositions’ (Uglow 1993, 508); she links this notion to Darwin and the idea that with oppositions, one will adapt and flourish and others will not. With Philip and Kinraid, it is clear which form of masculinity will flourish. Though charming, Kinraid, with his lack of education and foresight, is also linked to the primitive and to older forms of manliness like Daniel’s, which are in desperate need of revision (or abandonment, in Daniel’s case); in contrast, Philip is linked to the contemporary self-made capitalist. That is not to say, however, that Philip’s version of manliness will not need nuancing and revising. As Patsy Stoneman argues, Daniel and Kinraid seemingly ‘represent a primitive kind of populism’ while Philip ‘represents emergent capitalism’: [T]he competition between Sylvia’s lovers mirrors a historical conflict in which neither side is wholly admirable, because both rely on force…The love story apparently follows the historical process whereby ‘wild passion’ gives way to ‘reason and self-restraint’ (SL, 350), but the ‘wild cat’ Kinraid and the ‘prudential, shopkeeping Hepburn’ (Rance: 144) share the same basic aggression, structured by different ideologies of masculinity. (Stoneman 2006, 96)

Though the matter is oversimplified here—in the end, Kinraid is not ‘wild’ after all—both Uglow’s and Stoneman’s arguments are significant; Gaskell is clearly interested in social change and in notions of Darwinian evolution, and at the same time she seems to suggest that aggressive masculinity surfaces in both impassioned, individualist cultures and prudent, social cultures alike. Gaskell chooses one representative of aggressive masculinity from the ranks of those whose aggression is not merely socially acceptable but rather socially lauded: a heroic sailor. Throughout the novel, she emphasises the heroism and gallantry associated with sailors. Kinraid ‘rose up out of true sailor’s gallantry’ (SL, 90), and Philip is envious of Kinraid’s

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‘bright, courteous manner, the natural gallantry of the sailor’ (164). Further, she makes it clear that sailors are associated with physical strength as well as gallantry. Kinraid is taken by the press-gang as a ‘prize’ for an ‘active, strong, and evidently superior sailor’ (216). His prized physicality is raised up as a model, one as different to Philip’s as his manner: ‘Secure and exultant, [Kinraid’s] broad, handsome, weather-bronzed face was as great a contrast to Philip’s long, thoughtful, sallow countenance, as his frank manner was to the other’s cold reserve’ (206). Whereas Philip is often associated with feminine attributes, Kinraid is considered both manly—‘an expression so pleasant and manly in his open face’ (185)—and gentlemanly—‘something of that self-possession which we consider the attribute of a gentleman’ (186). A significant difference in these types of men is that Daniel Robson’s—and by extension, Kinraid’s—‘masculinity derives from a decided separation of gender-roles’, for women are not a part of the harpooning and whaling business, whereas Philip serves alongside Hester in the shop (Stoneman 2006, 97). Stoneman explains that ‘[e]xtreme gender-polarisation creates an atmosphere in which each sex admires in the other the qualities from which it is excluded’ such as in tales of the ‘knights and heroes of old’ (97). Though Kinraid fits into this category, and though he goes to fight ‘under the ancient machicolated walls where the Crusaders made their last stand in the Holy Land’, Gaskell makes it clear that ‘Kinraid [neither] knew or cared one jot about those gallant knights of old: all he knew was, that the French, under Boney, were trying to take the town from the Turks, and that his admiral said they must not, and so they should not’ (SL, 427). Kinraid’s unawareness of and lack of care for history calls his very heroism into question, for he does not subscribe to notions of historic heroism or consider notions of the nation and religion: he acts only in accordance with his admiral’s commands. Likewise, Kinraid’s military heroism is not vested with a sense of duty, which Gaskell makes clear is intrinsic to notions of the heroic in her short story, ‘The Sexton’s Hero’ (1847): ‘How would you then define a hero?’ I asked. …‘My idea of a hero is one who acts up to the highest idea of duty he has been able to form, no matter at what sacrifice. I think that by this definition, we may include all phases of character, even to the heroes of old, whose sole (and to us, low) idea of duty consisted in personal prowess.’ ‘Then you would even admit the military heroes?’ asked I.

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‘I would; with a certain kind of pity for the circumstances which had given them no higher ideas of duty. Still, if they sacrificed self to do what they sincerely believed to be right, I do not think I could deny them the title of hero.’ ‘A poor, unchristian heroism, whose manifestation consists in injury to others!’ I said. (MC, 101–102)

This exchange questions the assumption that military heroes are necessarily heroic and emphasises the need to nuance popular notions of heroism to include ideas of duty and morality. As Jenny Uglow points out, many Unitarians were pacifists, opening questions such as ‘where…is the scope for male courage, without war or fighting?’ (Uglow 1993, 147). Victorian Unitarians scorned ‘feudal “barbaric” codes of honour’ (Watts 2013, 119), and Unitarian John Aikin’s biographical series focused on ‘scientists, inventors, philosophers and reformers rather than the usual generals, rulers and politicians’ and ‘upheld as heroes those who achieve through their own ability and self-control, not those called great because of birth or conquest’ (Watts 2013, 47). For Victorians in general, as John Tosh makes clear, the ‘definition of masculinity’ was changing due to the ‘decline of bearing arms’, which had been a ‘central attribute of manhood since feudal times’; he notes, ‘Military manliness was still at a premium during the Napoleonic Wars, but it rapidly lost ground after 1815. With the abandonment of the duel, the growing professionalization of the armed forces and the reform of policing, the exercise of violence became specialized’ (Tosh 2005, 65). Gaskell is very much responding to historical change with regard to military manliness; in doing so, she calls into question the romanticised view of military heroism by emphasising Kinraid’s lack of regard for history and his lack of moral duty. Gaskell also undermines notions of military heroism by showing the effects of subscribing to such notions. For example, Philip focuses on his physical appearance in contrast to Kinraid’s: The sight he saw in the mirror was his own long, sad, pale face, made plainer and grayer by the heavy pressure of the morning’s events. He saw his stooping figure, his rounded shoulders, with something like a feeling of disgust at his personal appearance as he remembered the square, upright build of Kinraid; his fine uniform, with epaulette and sword-belt; his handsome brown face; his dark eyes, splendid with the fire of passion and indignation; his white teeth, gleaming out with the terrible smile of scorn. (SL, 386)

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This feeling of disgust in comparing himself to the strong Kinraid leads Philip to attempt to re-cast himself as the hero by enlisting. As d’Albertis makes clear, his ‘heroism must be enacted in a military and national cause…even as it is clearly motivated by private, domestic events’ (d’Albertis 1997, 130). In choosing to become a soldier and thus redeem himself in terms of the older model of masculinity, however, Philip becomes ‘friendless, sick, and shattered’ (SL, 434) and ‘none was so forsaken, so hopeless, so desolate’ (434). That being said, just moments before, Kinraid had ‘[fallen] back in despair; he lay there to die’ (431) and Philip had ‘lifted him up, carrying him like a child’ (431). In having the strong, strapping Kinraid reduced to a childish form, with Philip as his guardian and saviour, Philip has successfully transformed himself into the so-called hero, but at such a cost that it is clear that Gaskell calls into question the validity of this form of heroism. Philip’s decision, Stoneman writes, to ‘kill his prudential shopkeeping self’ and to enlist, thus ‘revert[s] to an older pattern of masculinity’ (Stoneman 2006, 101). Stoneman shows, however, that the battle scenes ‘expose the heroic ideal as childish’ since ‘the siege of Acre appears a series of random heroics’ (101). Philip becomes, she writes, ‘maimed and disfigured in a purely fortuitous explosion, which, far from confirming his heroic manhood, leaves him sick, poor, and unrecognized’ (102). Stoneman writes of the ‘ideological mechanism which, in the past, has linked aggressive masculinity with subservient femininity’ (102) and argues that Philip, as a self-made man is, historically, a hero (‘of the accumulation of capital’) but that ‘chivalry was always a forlorn hope’ for him (102). Jenny Uglow, too, points out when Philip enlists, ‘dreaming of returning as heroic as Kinraid’ (Uglow 1993, 523), ‘the division between male aggression and female nurture become schematically stark’ (523) as Gaskell shows that ‘men refuse to see [war’s] reality’ (524) and that the ‘[battle’s] obvious artifice denies the worth of heroic violence, however justified the cause’ (524). Gaskell comments, ‘The war was a popular one, and, as a natural consequence, soldiers and sailors were heroes everywhere’ (SL, 458), but she makes it clear that fighting has transformed Philip into a ‘long drooping form, his arm hung in a sling, his face scarred and blackened, his jaw bound up with a black silk handkerchief’ (458). Though war makes him socially lauded—‘these marks of active service were reverenced by the rustic cottagers as though they had been crowns and sceptres’ (458)—it

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has ruined Philip, transforming him into a ‘poor disabled marine…weary and despairing’ (470). This type of ‘heroism’ is not only destructive, but it is also false. One major flaw with Sylvia’s hero-worship of Kinraid is that he is inadequate as a hero. When Kinraid is presumed dead, he can remain heroic. When he returns, however, he is revealed to be fickle and the ‘the “death” of her hero’ can occur (Marroni 2010b, 174). It is only when Kinraid makes a ‘useful’ marriage that Sylvia realises that Philip’s love was truer and deeper: ‘Philip had a deal o’ good in him. And I dunnot think as he’d ha’ gone and married another woman so soon, if he’d been i’ Kinraid’s place’ (SL, 474) and ‘[t]he idea was irresistibly forced upon her that Philip would not have acted so; it would have taken long years before he could have been induced to put another on the throne she had once occupied. For the first time in her life she seemed to recognize the real nature of Philip’s love’ (437). Though Kinraid has risen in the military ranks to become a captain and a ‘grand officer’ (473), he has fallen in the ranks of romantic hero; it is clear that he has chosen a pretty wife with a large fortune—‘Miss Clarinda Jackson, with a fortune of 10,000 l ’ (437)— rather than marrying for love. As such, Kinraid’s brand of heroism has no arena within Victorian Britain. In Gaskell’s present society, if Kinraid were to leave England, he could become a military leader, invested in notions of duty, nation, and religion; likewise, he could become a freebooting adventurer in search of money, exploring the frontiers or becoming a fur-trapper in Canada. With regard to contemporary Victorian society, however, he is only a throwback, an anomaly. This old version of heroism is gone; though Gaskell could present Kinraid’s heroism being cut adrift with a sense of loss, she makes it clear that one is not left with any sympathy for the false Kinraid. She emphasises the dangers in his model of masculinity being domesticated: outwith Britain, he could prosper, but within it, he becomes rotten, corrupted into marrying for money. In contrast to Kinraid’s and Daniel’s associations with action and adventure and a type of masculinity that is primitive and out of place in Victorian society, Philip is associated with trade, self-restraint, and selfhelp, a forerunner to the mid-Victorian self-made man with his strong work ethic. Gaskell thus emphasises the chronological differences between these types of men. Though Philip may represent the more progressive model of masculinity, he is not necessarily a positive character. At the time of publication, Philip was criticised, with reviewers declaring that he was as ‘wise, excellent and disagreeable a young man as can be

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imagined’ and that there ‘is no fault to be found with him except that he is detestable’ (qtd in Gérin 1976, 229). Much later, Gerald Sanders deems Philip ‘unlovable’ and ‘sometimes…despicable’ (Sanders 1929, 119, 122). Philip is found ‘awkwardly doting…industrious, pious, somewhat smug’ (d’Albertis 1997, 105), as well as ‘serious, religious, and rather dull’ and unromantic (Wright 1965, 177). Though Philip may align with the ‘new’, his progressiveness aligns with industriousness and religion and is not romanticised. The Kinraid-Philip opposition compares to the later Henchard-Farfrae opposition in The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) in that many Hardy scholars see the two men as ‘binary opposites who respectively occupy the positions of passion versus reason, old versus new, and primitive versus modern’ and argue that ‘Henchard’s subordination to passion and nature…has to be replaced by dedication to reason and God’ (Avery 2008, 67). The conflict is between ‘the rugged individualist and the organization man, between primitive and modern ways of doing business’ (Paterson 1959, 157). Likewise, Kinraid represents the primitive and passion and Philip the modern and the rational. Henchard—the embodiment of ‘unconscious primitive strength’ (Avery 2008, 36)—is, according to John Holloway, a violent liar and may not be moral; nevertheless, he is associated with greatness: ‘Henchard stands above the others in what might be called psychic virtue…his whole nature, good or bad, is centred upon a deep source of vital energy. The rich stream of life still issues from life’s traditional order. It does not bring success, but it brings greatness and in a sense goodness’ (Holloway 1958, 236–237). In other words, though the more ‘primitive’ man may not be conventionally ‘good’ or moral, the older, more ‘natural’ way of life that he represents is seen as greater. This reading could suggest that Gaskell portrays Philip, the more ‘modern’ man, as moving away from this old way of life, with its capacity for greatness; as such, he becomes dull, awkward, and unromantic. That said, though Philip may not be seen as romantic as Kinraid, he speaks with a ‘passionate tone’ (SL, 151), has ‘deep passionate love’ for Sylvia (176), and has ‘passion boiling over’ (221). Though, like Henchard, he is a liar, he is not associated with the natural world but rather the commercial world of buying and selling. Whereas one could argue that Hardy depicts nostalgia for a world that is lost and the greatness that was once achievable, an old way of life associated with passionate individualism, Gaskell does not appear nostalgic for the past—and its corresponding models of masculinity—nor is she in

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absolute praise of the new models of masculinity. Perhaps one must follow Phillip Mallett’s note of caution towards over-simplifying the distinction in Hardy between the ‘great’ old and new: [T]he novel explores the processes of social change, as a community beginning to tire of the volcanic energies of one Mayor of Casterbridge turns with relief to the more cautious and prudent management of another. It has often proved tempting to go on to suggest that this is a novel about the clash between an older, greater, and somehow more truly rural way of life, and a newer, smaller, and essentially mechanical one. But this is to simplify the novel. (Mallett 2001, x)

Likewise, Gaskell’s novel defies easily categorising the past or the present as great. Easson argues: ‘Philip’s complexity is that he occupies the place in the action where we might expect to find the villain, and yet there is no villain in the novel. His situation is the more painful because he is living, intelligent, successful at business’ (Easson 1979, 175). One could push Easson’s position further, arguing that Gaskell problematises notions of progress through Philip; though one could expect him to be a villain, replacing the old, ‘great’ way of life—and ways of being manly—he is not, and, alternatively, though one could expect the progressive, successful, intelligent businessman with a strong work ethic to be an obvious hero, he is not. Though it is not ultimately clear whether the progress that Philip represents is good or bad, it is clear that Gaskell is critical of the model of masculinity that came before him. John Stuart Mill, in On Liberty (1859), argues that the age of respectability and conformity is squeezing away outstanding individualism, as society changes from the ‘individual’ being a ‘power in himself’ to contemporary society: ‘At present individuals are lost in the crowd’ (Mill 2008, 73), and ‘public opinion [is] peculiarly calculated to make it intolerant of any marked demonstration of individuality’ (77). Mill seeks ‘nonconformity’, ‘pronounced individuality’, and ‘exceptional individuals’ and argues ‘[t]hat so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time’ (74–75). Whereas Mill emphasises the value of individuality that is lost to contemporary society, Gaskell is critical of passionate individuality such as Daniel’s and Kinraid’s. Matthew Arnold, in Culture and Anarchy (1869; preface 1875), criticises contemporary thought for being ‘stock’ and ‘mechanical’ and advises learning ‘the best which has been thought and said in the world, and,

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through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically’ (Arnold 2006, 5). He notes, ‘The idea of perfection as an inward condition of the mind and spirit is at variance with the mechanical and material civilisation in esteem with us…The idea of perfection as a general expansion of the human family is at variance with our strong individualism, our hatred of all limits to the unrestrained swing of the individual’s personality, our maxim of “every man for himself”’ (Arnold 2006, 36). Arnold views self-interested individuals without a thought for others as being the opposite of ‘culture’, much like Tylor views ‘primitives’ as incapable of imagining others outside their surroundings and the immediate future. Arnold sees culture as a process of gradual development, with continual intellectual, emotional, and moral growth. This concept is key for understanding why Daniel—in his childish state—does not have a place in the end of the novel or in Gaskell’s contemporary society. Just as Daniel is ‘primitive’ in his incapacity for forward thinking, he also represents ‘anarchic individualism’ or ‘defiant individualism in conflict with a repressive authoritarianism’, as Shirley Foster notes with reference to Daniel’s ‘challenge to the tyrannies of authoritarianism’, exhibited in his shouts of ‘Nation here! Nation theere! I’m a man and yo’re another, but nation’s nowheere’ (Foster 1999, 151); though Arnold published after Gaskell’s death, she may have likewise criticised the ‘unrestrained swing’ of individualism and likewise championed education. Chris Vanden Bossche points out, ‘many Victorians were concerned that the desire for individual autonomy…was at odds with the achievement of social harmony; if all individuals sought only to promote their own personal gain, they would inevitably come into conflict with one another. The role of culture was to enable one to achieve a perspective from which to understand one’s individual needs in terms of the needs of society as a whole’ (Vanden Bossche 1999, 84). This idea of social harmony is crucial to Gaskell’s project, for her industrial fiction makes it clear that she seeks sympathetic exchanges and communication between the classes. Her two representatives of individualist cultures in Sylvia’s Lovers are found lacking; Daniel has no place in Victorian society, and Kinraid only finds a place if he becomes responsible, marrying for money in an opportunist fashion. That said, her representative of a prudent, social culture—Philip—has died by the novel’s end, equally banished from the novel.

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Though Gaskell displaces Philip from the space of the text, she only does so after showing that, unlike the ‘primitive’ and childish Daniel, he is capable of significant transformations and changes. It is clear that Philip is marked by his difference to the more ‘conventional’ masculinity displayed by men like Daniel and Kinraid. He is educated and he works in trade— in a draper’s shop, associated with ribbons in Daniel’s eyes. As Shirley Foster points out, ‘he is further removed from conventional masculinity by his affiliation with Quakerism and its creed of pacifism’ (Foster 1999, 157–158). Further, Philip’s abstention from drinking and smoking marks his difference from ‘conventional’ masculinity; unlike Kinraid and Daniel, Philip does not have the gift of storytelling and is instead associated with silence. In fact, his only chance to speak is when Daniel is smoking: ‘Philip did not smoke, so took his turn at talking, a chance he seldom had with Daniel, unless the latter had his pipe between his lips’ (SL, 39–40). Though Philip is dissociated from conventional ‘masculinity’, his ‘feminine’ side is positive in its gentleness. Most commonly, Philip’s touches are shown to be gentle towards Sylvia. He takes ‘her hand, and softly led her back to her weeping mother’ with ‘keen sympathy with their grief’ (281); then he presses ‘her hand tenderly, [as] a glow of gratitude overspread him’ (290); and he lifts ‘Sylvia carefully down in his arms…and then they all went into the light and the warmth’ (296). Whereas Daniel lacks a nuanced sympathy, Philip is at times so overwhelmed by his strong sympathy that he appears the opposite: ‘standing still and silent in the Haytersbank kitchen, too full of fellow-feeling and heavy foreboding to comfort, awkwardly unsympathetic in appearance from the very aching of his heart’ (282). Throughout the novel, he uses his hands to connect with Sylvia in a warm and affectionate way: he murmurs of pitying her as he ‘passed his hand so slightly over her hand that he could scarcely be said to touch it’ (31); on New Year’s, he ‘took her hand, and shook it warmly in reply’ (154); and he helps her pick up her mending and ‘had fast hold of her hand’ (194). When he handles a ribbon he intends to give Sylvia, his touch is tender: This ribbon was quite a different kind of present; he touched it tenderly, as if he were caressing it, when he thought of her wearing it; the briar-rose (sweetness and thorns) seemed to be the very flower for her; the soft, green ground on which the pink and brown pattern ran, was just the colour to show off her complexion. And she would in a way belong to him: her cousin, her mentor, her chaperon, her lover! While others only admired,

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he might hope to appropriate; for of late they had been such happy friends! (134)

As ‘touch’ turns to ‘caress’, a ribbon fades into a daydream, and Sylvia turns into a possession. There is a worryingly thin line between being ‘happy friends’ and being appropriated; the step between giving Sylvia a gift and having her belong to him may seem a gaping divide to readers but, to Philip, it appears to be no wider than the briar-rose ribbon in question. Further, of the relational words he chooses, though two of the four could be egalitarian (cousin, lover), two are decidedly unbalanced in terms of power (mentor, chaperon). This idea of ownership is further emphasised when Sylvia forfeits the ribbon to Kinraid and ‘implicitly grant[s] him possession of herself’ (Foster 1999, 161). In this respect, Philip is no better than Daniel, who ‘regards his daughter’s emotional future in terms of property’, an object with which to bargain (Foster 1999, 161). Thus, though Philip may be tender and soft, he is not necessarily seeking a balanced relationship, and Gaskell repeatedly stresses the importance of balanced unions in her oeuvre, both in the form of balanced, companionate marriages and with masters and workers collaborating. In contrast to the overall tenderness and comfort with which Philip’s hands are associated, Gaskell presents scenes in which pain is involved. When Sylvia realises that her father will be hanged, Gaskell writes: ‘…Oh, feyther! feyther!’ she choked out, almost stuffing her apron into her mouth to deaden the sound, and catching at Philip’s hand, and wringing it with convulsive force, till the pain that he loved was nearly more than he could bear. No words of his could touch such agony; but irrepressibly, and as he would have done it to a wounded child, he bent over her, and kissed her with a tender, trembling kiss. She did not repulse it, probably she did not even perceive it. (SL, 302)

Here, it is Sylvia causing the physical pain. Though it is nearly unbearable, Philip loves the pain, the force of the connection, the tangible sign that she depends on him in her moment of anguish. While he realises that speech cannot ‘touch’ her, this moment features the strongest instance of her need to touch him physically, wringing his hand uncontrollably. Gaskell uses sympathetic language towards Philip to make him appear equally distraught—trembling—and tender towards her, kissing her in a moment of weakness not in an opportunistic or predatory way but

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rather as one would kiss a child, in a caring, protective, innocent manner. In contrast, it is noteworthy that Sylvia is not repulsed by his action, as the narrator wryly comments that she likely did not notice it. d’Albertis, however, reads the scene in a different light, declaring this scene to be an example of Philip’s ‘arrogance tak[ing] on more unpleasant, even ghoulish, undertones in the novel’s few wooing scenes’ for he ‘makes love to Sylvia when she collapses in shock’ and ‘can not help delighting in circumstances that cripple the formerly disdainful Sylvia’ (d’Albertis 1997, 125). Though there is a lack of balance in Philip’s cherishing the moment in which Sylvia is dependent on him, Gaskell is careful to note that his kiss is like that towards a child, and she echoes this language later: ‘He longed at the sound to take her in his arms and hush her up, as a mother hushes her weeping child. But the very longing, having to be repressed, only made him more beside himself with guilt, anxiety, and rage’ (SL, 328). Again, he treats her as a child; the distinction here is that Gaskell explicitly links Philip to the maternal, to a mother hushing her child. Once more, there is mention of repression, though whereas earlier Philip acts ‘irrepressibly’ in kissing Sylvia, here, he is conscious of repressing his thoughts about Kinraid (and the lie he told). Directly afterwards, Gaskell writes that if Kinraid ‘had been there at the moment, Philip would have grappled with him, and not let go his hold till one or the other were dead’ (328). This use of his hands is altogether different from the tender, caring Philip previously shown. Whereas the earlier use of force was by Sylvia to Philip’s hands, this desire for violence is much more threatening, albeit only imaginary. Further, though Philip wishes ‘for a tender kissing’ after a ‘wholesome quarrel’ (367), Sylvia declares that their marriage was a mistake, and he ‘seized her by the arm rather roughly’ and ‘almost shook her’ (367). Gaskell notes, ‘she was half frightened by his vehemence of behaviour, which she took for pure anger, while it was the outburst of agonized and unrequited love’ (367). This distinction—between rough physicality as a sign of anger rather than as an outburst of love—is vital, for Philip’s physical actions are still linked to the positive emotion of love rather than the negative emotion of anger. In this way, Gaskell suggests that, though Kinraid may align with the more ‘primitive’ man and Philip with the more ‘progressive’, there is perhaps an innate aggression in both forms of masculinity, for Philip can easily turn from a tender man to a physically forceful one. After Kinraid has disappeared and Philip keeps hidden the reason why, Sylvia is saddened, and Philip feels ‘so full of pity for her’ but ‘[y]et, for

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all his pity, he had now resolved never to soothe her with the knowledge of what he knew, nor to deliver the message sent by her false lover. He felt like a mother withholding something injurious from the foolish wish of her plaining child’ (235). Philip only feels justified because he has recast himself in the family structure, believing he is playing a benevolent and protective mother’s role; Sylvia is not, however, a ‘plaining child’ and Philip does not hold any motherly privilege. His rewriting of the situation is therefore utterly unfounded. Gaskell thus questions Philip’s ‘maternal’ stance; though she clearly values stereotypically ‘maternal’ traits of tenderness and sympathy and displays them in positive male characters, she appears wary of this maternal role being exploited for individual gain— in this case, to justify a lie. Felicia Bonaparte argues that, in addition to his not smoking or drinking, ‘Philip represents to Gaskell the archetypal condition of woman. Gaskell clearly considers him female. All his characteristics are female, and he behaves in a female way. Thus, he is weak and undecided’ (Bonaparte 1992, 203). Though Bonaparte—and others— may associate femininity with weakness and indecision, Gaskell presents many strong and decisive female characters and rejects and complicates this simplified stereotype; thus, Bonaparte’s emphasis on Philip’s femininity is an oversimplification of the gender dynamic. Further, d’Albertis points out that Philip is a ‘feminized, yet recognizably masculine, subject’ and that his ‘gendering is made unstable, even occluded’ for he is ‘described alternately as strangely maternal and improbably virile’ (d’Albertis 1997, 131), arguing that ‘[t]he subject Gaskell creates in Philip is definable either as a monstrous woman or a very much diminished man’ (133). d’Albertis’s argument that Philip’s unstable gender identity ‘bear[s] the burden of the writer’s unresolved investigation of individualism’ (134) is compelling; that said, more could be made of the fact that Philip would be a monstrous woman, for Gaskell challenges the motive behind Philip’s justification by claiming to be maternal, and of the fact that his other option is to be a ‘diminished’ man. By the novel’s end, Philip’s body is burnt and disfigured, thus calling into question the debate on the relation of masculinity to strength and disability. This depiction echoes Gaskell’s exploration of disfigurement in Ruth and her emphasis on disabled men as associated with positive traits, such as tenderness and sympathy. Further, Philip’s body is ‘diminished’ due to battle wounds, which strengthen his claim to conventional masculinity rather than make him a ‘diminished’ man. The fact that he only triumphs—over Sylvia’s heart, and over Kinraid and Daniel—in this ‘diminished’ state could

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suggest that Gaskell sees a positive side to the man of strength being brought down in some way. In addition to using the contrast between Philip’s and Kinraid’s models of masculinity to address issues of strength, Gaskell uses the trope of competing lovers to draw out questions of gender relating to female ownership. She writes: She [Sylvia] wrung her hands in feverish distress. Urged by passionate feelings of various kinds, and also by his desire to quench the agitation which was doing her harm, Philip spoke, hardly knowing what he said. ‘Kinraid’s dead, I tell yo’, Sylvie! And what kind of a woman are yo’ to go dreaming of another man i’ this way, and taking on so about him, when yo’re a wedded wife, with a child as yo’ve borne to another man?’ In a moment he could have bitten out his tongue. She looked at him with…mute reproach…with such a solemn, searching look, never saying a word of reply or defence. Then she lay down, motionless and silent. (SL, 354)

Here is not an instance, as before, of Philip’s withholding information but rather of his speaking a lie; though his frustration with Sylvia’s outward show of love for another man is, perhaps, justified, the lie is not. The harshness with which Philip speaks silences Sylvia’s voice and stops her from wringing her hands and from moving altogether. She continues ‘speechless [and] motionless’ (355) as Philip begs for forgiveness, to the point where the nurse reprimands him, reminding him that Sylvia is not strong enough for ‘flytin’ and scoldin’’ and telling him to ‘leave her i’ peace if yo’re a man as can be called a man!’ (355). Just as Philip calls into question what kind of a woman Sylvia is, the nurse calls into question Philip’s manliness. Marion Shaw gives context to the scene, explaining that in 1857 the Matrimonial Causes Act made divorce viable for more people, meaning that ‘[f]rom this time a man or woman could, according to older, religious definitions of marriage, have two living spouses’ so that Philip’s ‘words would have resonated powerfully with a readership newly acquainting itself with the idea that a woman could now legitimately have two “husbands”’ (Shaw 1995, 48). The reverse sentiment is also true, however: many believed that a woman irretrievably belonged to the first man to possess her. As Keith Thomas explains, there was ‘the desire of men for absolute property in women, a desire which cannot be satisfied if the man has reason to believe that the woman has once

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been possessed by another man, no matter how momentarily and involuntarily and no matter how slight the consequences’ (Thomas 1959, 216). Kinraid, having possessed Sylvia’s ribbon—and with it, the permission to kiss her and in some way ‘possess’ her—had the first claim, and Philip is aggravated by this fact, as well as by the knowledge that Kinraid is still alive. When Kinraid returns, he draws on this issue of female ownership, declaring: [Y]our marriage is no marriage. You were tricked into it. You are my wife, not his. I am your husband; we plighted each other our troth. See! here is my half of the sixpence…I can get your pretence of a marriage set aside. I’m in favour with my admiral, and he’ll do a deal for me, and back me out. Come with me; your marriage shall be set aside, and we’ll be married again, all square and above-board. Come away. Leave that damned fellow to repent of the trick he played an honest sailor; we’ll be true, whatever has come and gone. (SL, 382)

The fact that both men can claim some form of rights to Sylvia is key, and Kinraid’s reference to an object—the sixpence—as proof of his rights emphasises his objectification of her; in claiming ownership of the sixpence, he lays claim to owning her. Though Kinraid’s speech enraptures Sylvia, and though he physically pulls her towards the door, the sound of her crying baby stops her. She tells Kinraid to leave, but she vows never to forgive Philip or ‘live with him as his wife again’ (383). Many characters call into question Philip’s manliness—whether for the way he treats Sylvia, his association with ribbons, or his trickery; nevertheless, Gaskell makes it clear that he has the will and resolution of ‘traditional’ masculinity. She notes, ‘Heavy miserable times of endurance and waiting have to be passed through by all during the course of their lives; and Philip had had his share of such seasons, when the heart, and the will, and the speech, and the limbs, must be bound down with strong resolution to patience’ (356). This resolution and self-control mark Philip as a strong man. As Sussman notes, for the Victorians, ‘the hegemonic bourgeois view defined “manliness” as the control and discipline of an essential “maleness” fantasized as a potent yet dangerous energy’ (Sussman 1995, 13); further, one ‘exemplifies manliness by exemplifying reserve, the ability to forge an external restraint sufficiently strong to control and to channel powerful internal energies’ (Sussman 1995, 28). Likewise, James Eli Adams notes the importance of the ‘power

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of self-control’ to ‘mid-Victorian accounts of manly character and selfdiscipline’ (Adams 1995, 68). This sense that masculinity is dependent on self-control, and that masculinity holds in place powerful moods and temperaments, entails that there be a deeper subjectivity to control. If, as Sussman notes, Victorian masculinity is a site of conflict, anxiety, and tension (Sussman 1995, 15), then internal control over a complex nature marks strong masculinity. Just as Thackeray’s Dobbin has an inner complexity to control and Charlotte Brontë’s St John is masculine in his resolution, control, and complexity, Philip’s manliness is therefore confirmed by his depth of feeling, by his intense subjectivity and control. Whereas Kinraid represents an older form of masculinity affirmed by martial valour rather than complexity of character, Philip represents the change in masculinity over time; not only does his profession mark him as a man who could easily assimilate into contemporary middle-class society, unlike Kinraid, he is also marked as a strong man for his complex feelings that must be suppressed and repressed. At the start of the novel, Philip seems to represent a weak man, associated with ribbons, and a weak form, thus disqualified from ‘full’ masculinity. In contrast, Kinraid is a strong arm, embodying passion and virile masculinity; when he returns to find Sylvia married to Philip, who never told anyone that he had seen Kinraid’s impressment, Kinraid raises his ‘closed fist…up to strike the man’ (SL, 380). Sylvia steps between the men and ‘[u]nconsciously she was Philip’s protection, in that hour of danger, from a blow which might have been his death if strong will could have aided it to kill’ (381). Kinraid’s predatory stance to his rival marks his passion for Sylvia, as he declares his love with his face ‘crimson with eagerness and hope’ (382). Though Kinraid’s physical strength and passion align him with Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff, Gaskell is critical of the type of masculinity that Heathcliff represents, just as she is not sympathetic towards Wuthering Heights in general (Letters , 494). Kinraid has passion, but his is not sustained. Whereas Heathcliff is never softened, Gaskell softens Kinraid, making him domesticated and respectable, a ‘dull’ Heathcliff. Further, Kinraid’s superficiality in his choice of wife and ability to forget Sylvia suggests, in contrast to Philip, a lack of complexity and depth of feeling. Philip is stronger in his complexity of emotion and control, and he also uses this will in place of physical strength. Roles are reversed; the man who could once kill Philip with one blow is eventually saved by Philip. When Kinraid is wounded, Philip ‘lifted him up, carrying him like a child; and with the vehement energy that is more from the

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force of will than the strength of body, he bore him back’ (SL, 431). In becoming a military hero, Philip not only proves his martial valour, but he also demonstrates that the control of the will, the disciplining of male energies, is more vital to masculine strength than physical force. In exploring social change, Gaskell could have invested in Kinraid’s model of masculinity and transformed the sea-faring and military captain into a contemporary Captain of Industry. He is, after all, a self-made man always on the look-out for the chance to improve his situation; even when captured by the press-gang, when his ‘soul was beating itself against the bars of inflexible circumstances’, he is ‘still mechanically looking out for chances’ (218). As Foster points out, he aligns with Daniel’s ‘assertive masculinity’, but he is ‘more progressive—and thus more successful’ due to his opportunism and ‘casting for an alternative future’ (Foster 1999, 151). That said, Gaskell casts this potential hero aside. Instead, she invests in the importance of discipline, for Philip’s disciplined will allows him to become socially respectable, a man of feeling and a traditional heroic military man. Gaskell thus replaces the eighteenth-century dandified man of feeling and sentiment with the nineteenth-century self-made man, who still has feeling but also has self-restraint and a strong ethic of self-help and hard work. Though Gaskell’s examination of the change from the primitive to the civilised is universalising, aligning with Tylor’s claim that all societies experience this transformation, her examination of the transformation of the man of feeling to the man of self-discipline is not universal and is very much a specifically Victorian historical change. Further, after proving himself a military hero, Philip becomes wounded and somewhat feminised again in his weakened state. Gaskell suggests that male aggression surfaces both in impassioned, individualist cultures and in prudent, social ones, as well as both corresponding representations of masculinity; nevertheless, Philip’s final transformation emphasises his abandonment of aggression and thus the potential for a new form of masculinity. Though one could argue that his weakened, feminised state is a ‘disabled’ form of chivalric manhood, Gaskell emphasises the strength, not disablement, of Philip’s new self. As Shirley Foster argues, ‘While the novel refutes a simple gendered reading of behaviour, however, it does ultimately prioritize certain values which are both traditionally Christian and implicitly “female”: forgiveness, sympathy, self-forgetfulness’; further, she notes, ‘This spirit becomes a model or standard for men as well as for women’. Philip ‘has to be “feminized”, not only through his symbolic physical enfeeblement but, more importantly, in his confession of sinfulness, his

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plea for Sylvia to forgive him, and his [being] stripped of the egocentric illusion and sophistries of selfish desire’ (Foster 1999, 164). By the end of the novel Philip is once again ‘soothing [Sylvia] with gentle, caressing hand [sic]’ (SL, 496), but he only returns to this tender, nurturing state after proving himself as a physical, traditionally manly man. The narrator explains that ‘[h]is only relief from thought, from the remembrance of Sylvia’s looks and words, was in violent bodily action’ (389). This need for physical action aligns him with the model of masculinity that Kinraid represents, though whereas Kinraid has a strong physical side and a lacking moral and emotional side, Philip has physical, moral, and emotional strength. Rather than the familiar pattern of a strong man learning empathy through suffering, Gaskell establishes a pattern where the weak but empathetic man can develop strength. By the story’s end, Kinraid is revealed to be a faithless man and an empty hero, whereas Philip changes from a tender man to a physical one, from a sedentary shopkeeper to a soldier; in this change from the mundane to the heroic, it becomes clear that he could represent the future man: successful at war and successful in trade, he is also successful in winning Sylvia’s heart. At the novel’s close, Sylvia is the active rather than passive force in seeking Philip’s affection; she ‘was kissing his hand, over which the languor of approaching death was stealing’ (495); ‘he felt her soft cheek laid upon his hand’ (495); ‘it was Sylvia who held his hand tight in her warm, living grasp; it was his wife whose arm was thrown around him, whose sobbing sighs shook his numbed frame from time to time’ (499); and ‘she held him in her arms’ (500), with ‘her hand holding his, her other thrown around him’ (501). For much of the novel, it was Philip who sought Sylvia’s attention and affection; now, Sylvia emotionally and physically seeks out Philip, making it clear that she has actively chosen him as her lover. Of the eponymous lovers, Philip reigns supreme. That said, Philip dies; just when the reader is given a glimpse of what a mutually loving, companionate marriage could look like, Gaskell tears away that potential for a happy ending. Gaskell uses the realm of historical fiction to examine historic and geographic change—from rural to urban, from a nation of farming and fishing to a nation of shop-keeping. In doing so, she explores changing notions of masculinity, from ‘primitive’ passions, associated with violence and individualism, to more sensible models of manliness, associated with trade and education; further, she makes it clear that it is not as simple

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as one type versus another but rather complicates the binary by emphasising that there is an underlying aggression in both forms of masculinity. Both Kinraid and Philip exhibit traits of self-help and self-improvement— traits highly valued by Gaskell’s contemporaries—and both exhibit martial valour and heroism during the novel; the military hero is, however, emptied of value and hollowed out, for Kinraid is revealed to be false, and Philip’s bravery in battle leaves him so wounded that he dies, unable to care for his wife and child. Though Philip is initially the un-heroic, un-romantic shopkeeper, he proves his heroism in saving Kinraid’s life (and that of his child) and in losing his own. While ultimately the hero, Philip dies, emphasising Gaskell’s struggle to find a place for any of the historic forms of masculinity that she represents; Kinraid is thrust offstage, married to a rich heiress and otherwise lost to the reader’s interest, and Daniel and Philip have passed away. Her struggle to envisage a future for these men suggests her larger challenge to envisage a model of masculinity that is fitting for the future. In complicating and nuancing questions of heroism, self-control, self-help, and manly emotion, Gaskell ultimately reveals an ambivalence about the qualities of historic manliness worth preserving.

Notes 1. Gérin argues that Kinraid and his ‘rattling talk and easy manner with women is both entertaining’ and more convincing than her portrayal of Philip, suggesting that perhaps his character was based on someone real: Captain Hill (who was engaged to her daughter Meta) (Gérin 1976, 215). Significantly, Captain Hill was based in India. 2. Though not radical, Gaskell is sympathetic to issues regarding women’s education and signed the first Married Women’s Property Act petition, noting, ‘our sex is badly enough used and legislated against, there’s no doubt of that ’, though ‘[a] husband can coax, wheedle, beat or tyrannize his wife out of something and no law whatever will help this that I see’ (Letters , 379).

CHAPTER 7

Husbands and Sons: Masculinity in Wives and Daughters

After focusing in Sylvia’s Lovers (1863) on a distinct historic past, Gaskell shifts her attention in Wives and Daughters (1864–1866) to a time still before her own, but more centred on everyday life than battles and impressments; by maintaining the vantage point of looking back, she continues examining old models of manliness. In setting up two divergent types of masculinity and paternity, she reveals each old model to be flawed. Mr Gibson fails to treat women equally and tries to keep Molly young and uneducated; Squire Hamley fails to connect to his sons and equally fails to save his estate. Simultaneously, Gaskell introduces multiple models of a ‘new’ man with competing lovers and contrasting sons. Whereas she presents Osborne as ultimately too lazy and poetic—and, some may say, too feminine—and Preston as too animalistic and tigerish, she emphasises Roger’s use of reason, sympathy, and science to make him the ideal son and husband to the titular wives and daughters. Gerald Sanders contrasts Gaskell’s earlier works of social reform with Wives and Daughters , written by a ‘sheer novelist’ not as a novel with a purpose but rather a ‘happy, cheerful, optimistic…novel of customs and manners’ that emphasises understanding through love (Sanders 1929, 137). Further, J.G. Sharps writes that it is ‘the most feminine of Mrs Gaskell’s longer works, just as it is the most English’ in that ‘[e]verything is quiet, peaceful, serene; there are no causes to be pleaded, no tears to be shed’ (Sharps 1970, 491). While it stands in obvious contrast to her industrial fiction, Wives and Daughters , like Sylvia’s Lovers is very much © The Author(s) 2020 M. Lowe, Masculinity in the Work of Elizabeth Gaskell, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48397-5_7

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concerned with social change. Though it may be ‘cheerful’ and ‘serene’, it is limiting to see it merely as a ‘happy’ novel. By reverting to the notso-distant past, Gaskell is able to comment on present society, and critics have pointed out that many contemporaries turn to a similar time period to examine social and economic change in Middlemarch (1871–1872), Felix Holt (1866), The Mill on the Floss (1860), and Vanity Fair (1848) (Easson 1979, 187; Leighton 2013, 491). In looking back, Gaskell examines change over a wide range of people, from the professional class to the landed aristocracy, from scientists and squires to governesses and land agents. Mary Elizabeth Leighton and Lisa Surridge, in detailing this ‘broad spectrum of provincial society’ that Gaskell presents, argue that ‘as she invites us to observe the adaptations that characters make (or fail to make), she represents all characters as enjoying the possibility of adapting to the new economy’ (Leighton 2013, 496). Indeed, adaptation and evolution are at the forefront of the novel (cf. Hughes 2007, 91), as is Gaskell’s Unitarian interest in human perfectibility and progress, informed by heredity, parental influence, and education (Uglow 1993, 589). Given its title—and the other titles Gaskell considered, including Two Mothers, Molly and Cynthia, and Mr Gibson’s Daughters (Sanders 2010, 130)—it is not surprising that critics have looked at Wives and Daughters as a novel about women. For example, Leighton and Surridge deem it a ‘novel of female economic and moral maturation’ (Leighton 2013, 491) that ‘contemplate[s] women as relative creatures (wives and daughters)’ (490), and Hughes and Lund argue, ‘More than her earlier serial novels, Wives and Daughters made a female’s development the plot as well as the driving force behind it’ (Hughes and Lund 1999, 26). Though the novel is undoubtedly concerned with women, it is also concerned with men—with fathers, sons, and lovers, with old men and young men, with masculine talent and success and masculine failure. Further, Gaskell grounds her exploration of masculinity in ideas of adaptation and evolution both explicitly—basing Roger’s character on Darwin and scientists like him—and implicitly, by exploring generational differences and social change as they relate to concepts of masculinity.

Fathers and Husbands Gaskell uses the historical fiction framework of setting her novel in the past to emphasise the importance of change and evolution. In focusing on two models of masculinity from the generation of fathers, she creates

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nuanced, sympathetic characters; nevertheless, she also reveals their flaws to illustrate why progress and evolution, key themes of the novel in general, are vital to masculinity as well. By presenting likeable characters as flawed, she demonstrates that though one can be nostalgic for the past, changes in society—and changes in masculinity—are advantageous, and she pinpoints which particular aspects of masculinity need to be revitalised. Further, though revealing them as flawed, Gaskell does not remove these fathers from the space of the text as she so often does; unlike John Barton, Mr Hale, and Daniel Robson, both Mr Gibson and Squire Hamley survive until the end of the novel (though perhaps that is only because Gaskell herself died before she finished writing it). Wives and Daughters may not revolve around much-debated contemporary issues regarding the working class or fallen woman, but Gaskell’s borrowing history from the Portico Library marks a clear interest in contemporary views of doctors. In 1864 and 1865, volumes of Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Doctor’s Wife (1865) are borrowed in quick succession (Healy 2017, A99), as well as John Ruffini’s Doctor Antonio (1855) (A103), Margaret Oliphant’s The Rector and the Doctor’s Family (1863) (A102), and Memoirs of the Life and Philanthropic Labours of Dr Andrew Reed (1863) (A96).1 This concentration is a marked increase from borrowing in previous years, which only includes Madame d’Arblay’s Memoirs of Doctor Burney (1832) (borrowed in November 1853; A32) and Anthony Trollope’s Doctor Thorne (1858) (borrowed in August 1858; A61–62). Even outwith the ‘social problem’ novel genre, Gaskell is clearly invested in responding to contemporary representations of manliness. Her interest in this profession is reflected in her depiction of Mr Gibson, who is, overall, a sympathetic character: a caring doctor, a nurturing father, and a learned scientist. His profession helps define his character to others; Lady Cumnor declares, ‘He’s a man of sense, or else he wouldn’t be our family doctor’ (WD, 126). Nevertheless, Gaskell makes it clear that though intelligent, he lacks certain insights: ‘surgeon though he was, [he] had never learnt to anatomize a woman’s heart’ and thus ‘took it all literally, and was excessively angry both with Cynthia and her mother’ (416). Whereas he does not appear to understand the type of femininity that Cynthia and Mrs Gibson represent, he does usually understand his daughter: ‘His commonplace words acted like an astringent on Molly’s relaxed feelings. He intended that they should do so; it was the truest kindness to her; but he walked away from her with a sharp

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pang at his heart, which he stunned into numbness as soon as he could by throwing himself violently into the affairs and cares of others’ (419). Gibson seems to diagnose Molly, deciding she needs an astringent and using his words to administer it; though his diagnosis may be apt, his caring paternal side shines through, for it stings him to cause Molly pain. He treats his own pain in visceral terms, stunning it into numbness and throwing himself violently into his career of helping others. Gaskell emphasises Gibson’s emotional depth: ‘Even Mr Gibson’s masculine heart was touched by the sorrow of the old servant, which made itself obvious to him every time he came across her by her broken voice and her swollen eyes’ (182). Gibson seems to read the patient’s body, locate symptoms—broken voice, swollen eyes—and diagnose her with sorrow. Though this clinical process may seem cold and rational, Gaskell perhaps suggests that Gibson’s medical perspective helps him to feel sympathy for others, including his servants; by focusing on bodies, rather than backgrounds, Gibson’s sympathy extends across class boundaries. Further, it extends across gender boundaries, for Gaskell emphasises that ‘even’ his ‘masculine heart’ was touched. Likewise, Mr Gibson speaks to the ill Aimée in French, having rationally identified it ‘to be the most intelligible to her dulled brain’ and Gaskell points out that ‘Mr Gibson did not think of [the fact that] it was the language in which she had been commanded, and had learnt to obey’ (609); by showing that this aspect of obedience is not at the forefront of his mind, Gaskell separates him from authoritative and commanding masculinity, emphasising instead that he is full of tenderness towards the patient, and Molly is ‘struck by her father’s low tones of comfort and sympathy’ (609). Gaskell makes it clear that in his role as ‘“the doctor” par excellence at Hollingford’, Gibson ‘was always welcome to the grandest circle of visitors at the house’ and ‘might lunch with a duke any day that he chose; given that a duke was forthcoming at the towers’ (37). Though some characters maintain that he rose in status because of his ‘elegant figure’ and ‘distinguished manner’ or because of some ‘aristocratic connections…never mind on which side of the blanket’ (36), and though the category of the gentleman may be more explicitly debated in North and South (1854), Gaskell uses Gibson’s social status to foreshadow the growing trend of social worth being linked to professional and intellectual worth rather than inherited or landed value. Appearances, however, do still matter; he is considered ‘perfectly presentable’ because ‘his accent

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was Scotch, not provincial’ and he lacked ‘superfluous flesh’, since ‘leanness goes a great way to gentility’ (37). This notion of appearance is key to the second Mrs Gibson, who declares, ‘Really, Mr Gibson, it is astonishing to compare your appearance and manners with your tastes. You look such a gentleman, as dear Lady Cumnor used to say’ (184). In her mind, if he looks like a gentleman, and if a Lady deems him to be a gentleman, he must be one. In contrast, Gibson—and, one may assume, Gaskell—mocks societal expectations about what is genteel; when Molly suggests he wear slippers and horseback ride and eat ‘bread-and-cheese’ with her—‘everything that is unrefined and ungenteel’ and that repulses his new wife—he jokes, ‘I’m not going to be corrupted. With toil and labour I’ve reached a very fair height of refinement. I won’t be pulled down again…I’m not quite going to return into barbarism’ (462). This playful attitude towards assumptions of ‘refinement’ for abstaining from cheese emphasises that there are those, like Mrs Gibson, who invest too seriously in notions of ‘rising’ and ‘falling’ in refinement and have superficial notions of ‘barbarism’ as being associated with ‘bread-and-cheese’. It also suggests that, whereas Gaskell took a cautious approach to the barbaric stages of development and primitive masculinities in The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) and Sylvia’s Lovers (1863), she injects humour into the topic of the linear progress of society, poking fun at the notion that one man could descend to a different anthropological state merely by enjoying uncouth gastronomical tastes. Gibson is likeable not only for his light-hearted attitude towards class pretensions but also for his tender love for Molly: ‘the two had the most delightful intercourse together—half banter, half seriousness, but altogether confidential friendship’ (30). Gaskell notes that ‘his domestic affections were centred on little Molly’ (30), and even after remarrying, ‘his interests principally centred’ on Molly (222). Whereas in Mary Barton (1848), Gaskell depicted working-class paternal nurturance—and with it, questions of whether that nurturance was innate or learned because of the need for working-class mothers to work—here, she examines paternal nurturance in an educated professional; though she leaves open the question of whether Gibson took on the maternal role due to Molly’s mother’s death or whether these characteristics were innate, it is telling that the centrality of fatherhood to his identity continues even after

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he remarries and ostensibly gives Molly a mother figure. John Tosh, in A Man’s Place (1999), writes: [William Cobbett’s] Advice to Young Men was published in the 1830s out of a keen sense that the nursing father, like other traditional manifestations of English manhood, counted for less and less. One reason was hinted at by Cobbett himself: after fondly recalling the hours he had spent with his children he added quickly, ‘yet I have not been effeminate’. It was a hard line to hold. As the gendered character of man and woman, of father and mother, became more polarized, there was less tolerance for paternal behaviour which appeared to encroach on the maternal role…[By 1849 James Stephen] felt obliged to stress that Wilberforce’s tenderness had never ‘degenerated into fondness’ or been expressed ‘by caresses or by a blind and partial admiration…[In 1824 Thomas Carlyle] was appalled to find how fatherhood had changed his friend Edward Irving: ‘…speak to him, he directs your attention to the form of [his offspring’s] nose, the manner of its waking and sleeping, and feeding and digesting’. Such things were properly ‘the wife’s concern alone’ and hence ‘piteous to behold’ in a grown man. (Tosh 2007, 87–88)

In contrast to these contemporaries, Gaskell depicts a tender and positive side to Gibson’s capacity for ‘traditional’ maternal nurturance, emphasising that gender roles need not be staunchly binary. Gibson and Molly are connected both emotionally and physically, as her hands ‘nestled in [his] firm compact grasp’ (WD, 77) and he ‘stroked [Molly’s] head tenderly’ (583). Gibson may infantilise Molly, but their physical exchanges reveal that she does have agency within their relationship. Though he takes her ‘little brown hand’ to guide her to a seat to tell her of his new engagement, she is the one to release herself from his grasp: she ‘pulled her hand away, and used both it and the other to turn her father’s head’ (113). In using both hands to manipulate her father’s focus, her manual guiding of the male gaze is, though subtle, a movement of control. Gibson, in a plea or sympathy, ‘again tak[es] her hand’, but again, Molly assumes the role of power by releasing herself from his hold, ‘gently drawing her hand out of his’ (114). Molly will not allow her father to hold her hand once she realises he will be transferring some of his affection for her to a new wife; in other words, her refusal of a physical bond is echoed in the fact that she feels an emotional bond has been broken. This negotiation of hands and emotions continues when Gibson returns home from his wedding journey: ‘there was a certain hardness and constraint in his

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manner’ until Molly vows to call his new wife ‘mamma’, at which point ‘[h]e took her hand, and grasped it tight’ (181). This gesture demonstrates a shift in power, for he only takes Molly’s hand once she cedes her ground in offering to affirm his new wife’s legitimacy. Though Gibson is undoubtedly close to Molly, and though there is a give-and-take in their relationship, Gaskell shows Gibson’s tenderness for his daughter as she simultaneously shows how childlike she seems to him: ‘[s]he looked very soft, and young, and childlike; and a gush of love sprang into her father’s heart as he gazed at her’ (113). Gibson sees Molly as a child to be protected, or even as a lamb to shelter: ‘he did not want his little Molly to be passing from Scylla to Charybdis; and, as he afterwards scoffed at himself for thinking, he had got an idea that all young men were wolves in chase of his one ewe-lamb’ (55). While he scoffs at himself for viewing her as a ‘ewe-lamb’, Gibson nevertheless sends Molly to Hamley Hall when his apprentice Mr Coxe shows too much interest in her; shielding her from Coxe’s letters, he wishes for her to stay a child. Further, he does not scoff at himself for wishing to limit Molly’s education, as he tells her governess: Don’t teach Molly too much: she must sew, and read, and write, and do her sums; but I want to keep her a child, and if I find more learning desirable for her, I’ll see about giving it to her myself. After all, I’m not sure that reading or writing is necessary. Many a good woman gets married with only a cross instead of her name; it’s rather a diluting of mother-wit, to my fancy; but, however, we must yield to the prejudices of society…and so you may teach the child to read. (32)

His comments about illiteracy are perhaps sarcastic, but his desire to keep Molly reasonably uneducated is directly linked to his desire to ‘keep her a child’; in other words, he seems to believe that knowledge will mature her—potentially dangerously so. By contrast, Roger—one representative of masculinity in the next generation—actively seeks to teach Molly, emphasising all the more that Gibson’s views are outdated. Others have rightly noted Gibson’s infantilising attitude towards his daughter’s sexuality (Hughes and Lund 1999, 29; Bonaparte 1992, 58), as well as his wish to limit her education (Hughes 2007, 101; Colby 1995, 92); Bonaparte’s claims, however, that Gibson is modelled on Gaskell’s ‘misogynist’ father (Bonaparte 1992, 56) and that Molly is a ‘victim of all men’ (66), are contradictory to Gérin’s more positive likening of

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Gibson to Gaskell’s father and his Scots accent (Gérin 1976, 286) and her husband’s ‘self-deprecating manner’ with his daughter (284). Likewise, Robin Colby notes that though Gibson does shield Molly, he offers emotional support, sympathy, and admiration, allowing her to ‘strongly identif[y] with masculine ideals of action and achievement’ (91). As these varied analyses demonstrate, Gaskell’s portrayal of Gibson is nuanced; though he is able to adopt traditionally maternal and positive traits such as tender friendship with his daughter, he still reverts to the traditionally paternal stance of protection. As Tosh writes, ‘Cradling an infant girl and defending her virginity when grown were the images of the protecting father which appealed most deeply to middle-class Victorians’ (Tosh 2007, 85); as in Cousin Phillis (1864), Gaskell problematises the trope of over-protective fathers who seek to limit their daughters’ education. When Gibson hears of the (erroneous) gossip that Preston and Molly are somehow involved, he declares, ‘I’d rather not speak any more about it just at present…I may not control myself as I ought. I only wish I could meet Preston, and horsewhip him within an inch of his life. I wish I’d the doctoring of these slanderous gossips. I’d make their tongues lie still for a while. My little girl! What harm has she done them all, that they should go and foul her fair name?’ (WD, 540). However, he then laughingly states, ‘What have I said about horsewhipping or poisoning? Do you think I’d have Molly’s name dragged about the streets in connection with any act of violence on my part?’ (540). Though this violence is only short-lived even in its imagined state, his turn to physicality to defend his daughter is key; keeping his daughter pure and untainted—by man—is so vital to him that he loses sight of reason, and keeping his daughter untainted— by gossip—is what makes him rein in his passion. This critical look at historic and aggressive masculinity echoes Gaskell’s interest in the subject in Sylvia’s Lovers . Later, Gibson confronts a trembling Molly, engaging in not imagined but real violence: He had taken hold of her two arms just above her wrists, as she had advanced towards him; he was unconscious of this action; but, as his impatience for her words grew upon him, he grasped her more and more tightly in his vice-like hands, till she made a little involuntary sound of pain. And then he let go; and she looked at her soft bruised flesh, with tears gathering fast to her eyes to think that he, her father, should have hurt her

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so. At the instant it appeared to her stranger that he should inflict bodily pain upon his child, than that he should have heard the truth—even in an exaggerated form. With a childish gesture she held out her arm to him; but if she expected pity, she received none. (543)

It is telling that Mr Gibson is unconscious of his physical action; his hands act on his emotions, with no sense of his knowing what he is doing. It is his mental impatience that transforms his hands into vices. Though Molly is hurt physically, it appears to be the emotional pain that affects her the most; in reconciling the competing vision she has of her father as a sympathetic man with the current image of him as a violent one, she struggles. Though Gaskell leaves it open-ended as to whether Molly expects pity, she makes a definitive statement that Gibson gives her none. In punishing her body rather than seeking answers from her verbally, Gibson weakens Molly, and it is only natural that she reverts to a childlike state, giving a ‘childish’ gesture of holding her bruised arm out to her father. Rather than kiss the child’s wounds in a fatherly gesture, Mr Gibson declares, ‘Pooh!…that is nothing’ (543); nevertheless, he stops assaulting her physically and uses his words to harangue her. He speaks ‘bitterly’ and declares that ‘[y]our mother is dead. That’s one comfort’ (543), as if to say that besmirching a father’s name is at least not as bad as a mother’s. Though Molly ‘tr[ied] to take one of his hands’, he ‘kept them tightly in his pockets’ (543). This gesture on her part, to try to connect with her father, is negated by his desire to be self-contained—both physically, for his hands are kept tightly to himself, and emotionally, for he refuses to be drawn out. Gibson’s self-containment is not ultimately positive. Though he acknowledges his new wife’s ‘flimsy’ sentiments (337), he ‘wilfully shut his eyes and waxed up his ears to many small things that he knew would have irritated him if he had attended to them’ and ‘would not allow himself to become more aware of her faults and foibles by defining them’ (337). When he begins to have ‘sudden tears’ in this moment of selfrestraint, realising how the new situation has affected Molly, he stops himself, reverting to whistling instead (337). In contrast, Molly questions her father’s restraint after noting that his wife’s conduct manifests in ‘pain’ on his face: It was a wonder to Molly whether this silence was right or wrong. With a girl’s want of toleration, and want of experience to teach her the force

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of circumstances, and of temptation, she had often been on the point of telling her stepmother some forcible home truths. But…her father’s example of silence…made her hold her tongue. (380)

Gaskell thus suggests that Gibson’s toleration and experience keep his pain in check, for it is Molly’s lack of experience that prompts her wish to speak. The question of silence is, moreover, a gendered topic, as John Tosh explains: One other attribute was critically important in distinguishing manliness from gentlemanliness: frank straightforwardness, not only in action…but also in speech. The touchstone of polite conversation was the anticipated impression made on the listener. The manly man was someone who paid more attention to the promptings of his inner self than to the dictates of social expectation. Manly speech was therefore direct, honest and succinct. Its purpose was not to please, or to shield listeners from the disagreeable, but to convey meaning without equivocation. The result might not be ‘socially pleasant’…Directness and sincerity might well cross the boundary of propriety and appear brusque or even rude. When a man had nothing to say from the heart, the right course was silence. Hence, in complete distinction from the conventions of politeness, manliness often meant taciturnity. (Tosh 2007, 87–88)

It is difficult to tell whether Mr Gibson’s silence is a sign of his gentlemanliness or his manliness. By not speaking, he is shielding his wife from the disagreeable and attempting to be pleasant, yet his silence is linked to his brusque manner and his manner could be deemed taciturn. This silence aligns with Herbert Sussman’s arguments about Victorian masculinity that ‘[t]he very act of speaking signifies their own unmanliness, their distance from the silence as reserve that marks true manhood’ (Sussman 1995, 43) and ‘the truly manly man remains silent’ (128). Though his silence may be interpreted differently, it is clear that Gibson values action over emotion: ‘he was always a man for immediate action as soon as he had resolved on the course to be taken’ (WD, 614). Gibson is a man of action and resolution, and, even with Molly, he prioritises reason over feelings: ‘even to her, in their most private moments, he did not give way to much expression of his feelings’ and ‘[h]e had rather a contempt for demonstrative people, arising from his medical insight into the consequences to health of uncontrolled feeling’ for ‘[h]e deceived himself into believing that still his reason was lord of

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all, because he had never fallen into the habit of expression on any other than purely intellectual subjects’ (30). Though he scorns uncontrollable emotion as unhealthy, his self-restraint ultimately makes him bitter and hardened, for he keeps his feelings about his wife in check rather than allowing himself a release: He had become nervously sensitive to his wife’s failings, and his whole manner had grown dry and sarcastic, not merely to her, but sometimes to Cynthia,—and even…to Molly herself. He was not a man to go into passions, or ebullitions of feeling: they would have relieved him, even while degrading him in his own eyes; but he became hard, and occasionally bitter in his speeches and ways… (430–431)

In a novel concerned with Darwin, natural and sexual selection, and progress, Gibson’s failure to choose a proper wife carries much weight. Not only is he himself ultimately disappointed in his selection, but his manliness is also at stake, for he becomes a far-from-perfect model of domestic masculinity in his roles as husband and father, as he becomes harsh to his wife, his step-daughter Cynthia, and Molly. Significantly, Gaskell undermines Gibson’s manliness as he becomes ‘nervously sensitive’. The language mirrors that of John Martineau, who describes Kingsley similarly: ‘With all his man’s strength there was a deep vein of woman in him, a nervous sensitiveness, an intensity of sympathy, which made him suffer when others suffered’ (qtd in Adams 1995, 132). Kingsley is described as having ‘inadequate self-mastery—a failing that made him seem, he feared, both “un-English” and unmanly’ and ‘his contemporaries, both friends and adversaries, were struck by the extraordinary vehemence and volatility of his emotions’ (Adams 1995, 132). Though Gibson does not express this same volatility of emotions, his nervous sensitivity similarly hints at a loss of manliness. Thus, although his silence may be manly, the consequences of this silence are potentially emasculating. The ‘dumb discordancy’ (WD, 432) between Gibson and his wife suggest that neither will speak of their issues; instead, he reacts physically and ‘got into that kind of exaggerated susceptibility with regard to his wife’s faults, which may be best typified by the state of bodily irritation that is produced by the constant recurrence of any particular noise […which causes an] irritable state of nerves’ (432). His bodily irritation and nervousness again hint at a failing of self-mastery, as James Eli Adams makes clear: ‘When masculine authority inheres in self-discipline, those

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who are not “self-contained” feel impotent, even emasculated’ (Adams 1995, 132). Thus, though Gibson is a sympathetic character, Gaskell suggests that his failings as a father and as a husband suggest a failure of masculinity which will need to be nuanced and challenged in the next generation. Like Gibson, Squire Hamley is likeable but not without faults. Most significantly, as a father, he fails to understand his son Osborne, and as a land-owner, he fails to maintain proper care of his estate. Despite these challenges to his masculine domestic authority, he is not banished unceremoniously from the text as so many other Gaskellian fathers are; instead, Gaskell uses his love for his grandson to challenge his class prejudices and nationalistic biases, and she uses Roger’s successes to challenge the Squire’s outdated favouring of the eldest son. Though the Squire is devoted to his wife, ‘valu[ing] every minute’ (206) before she dies, proclaiming that they ‘loved each other so dearly’, and distinguishing their love from the ‘silly fancy, and sentimental romance’ of love ‘nowadays’ (57), he lives a life ‘of monotony in which he delighted, but which sometimes became oppressive to his wife’ (67). They do not appear to have the intellectually fulfilling companionate marriage that Unitarian Victorians valued so highly. For example, Gaskell’s friend Hannah Greg had a ‘“paramount dread” of her home being dull to either husband or children’ so ran a family literary and philosophical society and sought to provide ‘eager, intellectual and liberal vitality’ (Watts 2013, 88–89). In contrast, Gaskell makes it clear that ‘they were very happy, though possibly Mrs Hamley would not have sunk into the condition of a chronic invalid, if her husband had cared a little more for her various tastes, or allowed her the companionship of those who did’ (WD, 41). Gaskell reiterates that Mrs Hamley ‘sank into ill-health’ after she ‘gave up her sociable pleasure in the company of her fellows in education and position’ specifically because her husband ‘disliked associating with those to whom he ought to have been an equal’ (41). Gaskell thus emphasises the importance of intellectual equality for both the happiness and the health of husband and wife. The Squire’s deficiencies in education mark his views as outdated not only intellectually but also conjugally. Though he loves his wife, his romantic attitude without a foundation in equality is, Gaskell suggests, better left in the past. Further, this isolationism is ultimately damaging to Squire Hamley himself: ‘All these fancies would have been set to rights could he have talked them over with his wife; or even had he been accustomed to mingle

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much in the society of those whom he esteemed his equals’ (259). It also damages his relationship to his sons, particularly Osborne, for ‘the jealousy and mauvaise honte that this inferiority had called out long ago, extended itself in some measure to the feelings he entertained towards his sons’ (259). Likewise, it establishes a pattern for isolation, for Osborne ‘knew but few young men of his own standing in the county’ for ‘[i]t had never been the Squire’s custom to encourage his boys to invite their friends to the Hall’ (260–261). In contrast, Roger is actively involved in scientific communities, and Gaskell places great value on this sociability. The Squire is likewise out of touch with society in the fact that he has no sense of money; rather, ‘the romantic side of his nature’ leads him to love the trees on his estate and to be ‘cut…sharp’ when valuers reduce the ‘esteemed’ trees to a monetary value (259). With only romanticised views, he fails to understand that he is a poor manager of his estate: ‘He chose rather to cherish the morbid fancy that he was useless in this world—born under an unlucky star—that all things went badly under his management. He put his misfortunes down to the score of Fate—not to his own’ (259). This superstitious belief in fate and stars marks the Squire as a relic of the past who fails to adjust to modern economic principles. In noting that he continues ‘the primitive manners and customs of his forefathers’ (40), Gaskell extends her interest in the primitive from Sylvia’s Lovers , exploring old stages of civilisation that require revision. The Squire’s rage equally marks him as somehow less civilised, liable to ‘fits of temper’ (79) and ‘almost savage’ with Molly (202). He was less emotionally volatile in his wife’s civilising and calming presence, but after her death, he is ‘most passionate and authoritative’ (257). Likewise, he lacks motivation and a work ethic once his wife passes away: ‘now that she was no longer there to encourage him…he grew indifferent to it himself’ (258). In contrast to contemporary models of masculine selfhelp and hard work, the Squire is of a different era and a different mould of gentlemanliness, and Gaskell emphasises this difference in time and development in noting he has a ‘touch of savage irony in his manner which frightened Mrs Gibson’ (194). The Squire’s older brand of gentlemanliness differs markedly from his son Osborne’s. For example, the land agent Preston, whose own gentlemanliness is questionable, declares, ‘The poor old Squire—not the wisest of men—has woefully mismanaged his estate. Osborne Hamley is too fine a gentleman to understand the means by which to improve the value of the land—even if he had the capital’ (237). Whereas the Squire’s failure is

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attributed to lack of wisdom or education, Osborne’s is attributed to his ‘fineness’. The Squire uses similar language to describe Osborne, telling him, ‘I don’t ask you to help me in the management of the land—you’re far too fine a gentleman for that; but if you can’t earn money, at least you needn’t spend it’ (265). This advice is a reflection on Osborne’s status as a gentleman and as a man; it seems as though the ‘fineness’ of his gentlemanliness contributes to his failure as a man, for it is inextricably linked to his inability to improve the estate and, with it, the family’s future. Though Osborne’s status as a gentleman may not be questioned, the value of his type of gentlemanliness is, for he fails as a son, as a husband, and as a father, ultimately unable to support his wife and son. Osborne’s ‘fine’ gentlemanliness clashes with his father’s ‘primitive’ gentlemanliness, leading to distance and hostility between the two, as the Squire fails to understand and connect to Osborne. The Squire scorns Osborne’s ‘foppery’ (275) and dress, ‘consider[ing] it affectation and finery’ (262). Nevertheless, the Squire values lineage, and Gibson notes that ‘the squire will always respect Osborne as his heir, and the future representative of the family’ (231); in doing so, however, the Squire overlooks Roger as the second son and neglects to appreciate fully his successes. The Squire takes great pride in the fact that their family ‘has been on the same land for hundreds of years’ (321) and wants his son to marry someone equally ‘well-born’ (454) with ‘honourable blood’ (421). Though he is shocked after Osborne’s death to find that he is married to a ‘French baggage of a servant’, he is ultimately more invested in Osborne’s familial roles: ‘Husband and father, and I never knew’ (589– 590). He takes a keen interest in Osborne’s son, particularly in his displays of physical manliness, declaring, ‘He’s a sturdy chap, isn’t he?…And he can puff four puffs at grandpapa’s pipe without being sick, can’t he?’ (662). The sturdiness of the son implies that, as Mary Debrabant argues, Osborne’s ‘mixed marriage’ has proved the ‘vitality’ of adding to the Hamley gene pool, in keeping with Darwinian logic about the advantages of variation and diversity (Debrabant 2002, 19). Though the Squire may be disappointed by Osborne’s wife’s breeding and nationality, he is not disappointed by the healthy child she bears. Further, though he initially wishes to send Osborne’s wife away and to keep the child, they develop a close bond through ‘crying together, and condoling with each other’ (WD, 675). Thus, though the Squire may have failed as a husband in connecting with his wife and as a father in connecting with Osborne,

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Gaskell hints at a hopeful, optimistic future as he connects to his grandson and daughter-in-law.

Lovers and Sons In addition to comparing two models of fatherhood representing the earlier generation, Gaskell presents three masculine representatives of the next generation—Osborne, Roger, and Preston—and puts them in direct contrast to each other and their predecessors. Through this pattern of oppositions, Gaskell not only explores generational change—and on a small scale, historical change—but also examines evolution through competition and challenges notions of birth order setting a gauge for worth. As a land-agent competitive in business, Preston could be taken as a modern ‘new’ man, for his position relies not on birth but on his selfmade status. Gaskell is not, however, ultimately interested in Preston’s commercial success but rather focuses on his role as a lover. Preston represents a deviation from Gaskell’s earlier trope of flighty lovers such as Kinraid or Holdsworth. As many critics have noted, even the most outwardly bad character of this novel is not that bad, for Preston believes in his passion for Cynthia (cf. Gérin 1976, 281; Craik 1975, 253), to the point of being ‘angry with himself for still loving Cynthia; loving her in his own fashion, be it understood’ (WD, 533). Gaskell notes that he ‘was more really true than many worthy men; who, seeking to be married, turn with careless facility from the unattainable to the attainable…But no one would ever be to Mr. Preston what Cynthia had been, and was; and yet he could have stabbed her in certain of his moods’ (533). Preston is unable to control his feelings, both in his anger towards himself and his desire to stab Cynthia. He is repeatedly linked to this lack of control. For instance, he speaks ‘in a tone which he meant to be icily indifferent, but which trembled with anger’ (301), with the struggle between fire and ice manifesting itself on his trembling body. Though Preston is physically strong, this lack of self-control signals a lack of strong masculinity. As James Eli Adams shows, self-control was a defining aspect of Victorian masculinity, noting ‘mid-Victorian accounts of manly character and selfdiscipline’ (Adams 1995, 68) and ‘the importance of “strict self control” in the formation of the gentleman’ (163) in Smiles’s Self -Help (1859), as well as in Ruskin’s argument that ‘self-command…is rather a way of imitating a gentleman than a characteristic of him; a true gentleman has

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no need of self-control; he simply feels rightly on all occasions’ (qtd in Adams 1995, 163). Further, Herbert Sussmann looks to Freud and Foucault for ‘[t]his definition of manhood as self-discipline’ (Sussman 1995, 10) and examines literary examples such as Carlyle: ‘Abbot Samson, then, exemplifies manliness by exemplifying reserve, the ability to forge an external restraint sufficiently strong to control and to channel powerful internal energies’ (27). Preston’s capability of masculine self-restraint is questioned, thereby likening him not only to an earlier form of aggressive masculinity but also to an even baser stage of progress: an animal. He is a predatory lover, declaring that he has ‘been willing to wait for years—to be silent when silence was desired—to suffer jealousy and to bear neglect’ (WD, 487). This language of silence, suffering, and neglect makes Preston seem weak and pitiable, yet his language which follows—‘I won’t give you up. If you will but keep your word, and marry me, I’ll swear I’ll make you love me in return’ (487)—has undertones of ownership, power, and force. It is no wonder that Cynthia and Molly view him as threatening, as they sense ‘he was still pursuing them’ as if he were a hunting predator. Gaskell emphasises the terror associated with Preston: Cynthia declares that ‘almost to my terror, he began to talk violent love to me’, that she ‘was so frightened’ (495), and that Preston ‘made [her] feel as if [she were] in his power’ (496); when she tells him she will not marry him, he turns from ‘passionate protestations’ to ‘condescend[ing] to threats’ (497). Further, Cynthia says that ‘I’ve thought I would marry Mr Preston out of pure revenge, and have him for ever in my power—only I think I should have the worst of it; for he is cruel in his very soul—tigerish, with his beautiful striped skin and relentless heart’ (497). Though Cynthia, like Preston, craves power, she sees the threat he represents both internally—predatorily cruel in his soul—and externally, with his animalism written on his skin. This emphasis on his physical animalistic ‘tigerish’ masculinity is suggestive of Darwin’s theory of natural selection and sexual selection for, as Deirdre d’Albertis comments, Gaskell focuses on ‘overt physical competition’ between Preston’s ‘“masculinity” and bodily strength’ and Roger’s ‘stamina and health’ (d’Albertis 1997, 144). Gaskell suggests that Preston views sexual competitors in an animalistic sense; when Cynthia and Molly speak well of the Hamleys, Preston has ‘an animal’s instinctive jealousy and combativeness against all popular young men’ (WD, 358). Though Gaskell provides rationales, such as the Hamleys’ higher

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social class and contrasting political views, stating that ‘[a]ll this was satisfactory and consistent enough’ (358), she also shows that he ‘had always hated and despised the Tories in general’ but ‘hated the Hamleys and Roger especially, with a very choice and particular hatred’ (359). Though Preston’s reasoning may be ‘consistent enough’, he is not ruled by rationality but rather by animalistic aggression. John Lucas argues, ‘Mrs Gaskell has been betrayed into absurdity…animals are not jealous of popular young men (are they even jealous of popular young animals?)— the very fact that she reaches instinctively for the word indicates a class bias of a very primitive kind. Preston is simply anathema to her’ (Lucas 2016, 11). It seems more absurd that Lucas took Gaskell’s language literally than that Gaskell should use ‘animal’ to describe Preston. Patsy Stoneman notes that Lucas ignores the ‘evolutionary matrix for social change…taking class-conflict as the only mechanism of change’, arguing that Preston and Roger’s struggle is not only about class but also about sexual rivalry and Darwin’s sexual selection (Stoneman 2006, 125–126). Though there is perhaps class bias that leads Gaskell to use similar language as ‘animalistic’ racist language in Victorian Britain, to dismiss the passage as absurd is unproductive; further, Gaskell depicts Preston not as ‘simply anathema’ but as an occasionally sympathetic character, with Molly ‘almost sorry for him’ (WD, 506). She does not merely write him off as a lower-class ‘animal’; she explains why he is so repulsive, following up the ‘animal’ comment with: ‘And, under the cover of sympathy with the dismissed labourers, Mr Preston indulged his own private pique very pleasantly’ (359). Gaskell repeatedly invests in the great potential of sympathy; here, she condemns Preston for not having fellow feeling for the labourers but rather using the guise of sympathy for his own ends, which she highlights through the alliteration of Preston’s pleasant private pique. In other words, by taking sympathy—that which Gaskell values most—and tarnishing it by devaluing it, Preston himself is tarnished. In contrast, Roger exhibits a great deal of fellow feeling; unlike Preston’s reliance on predatory tactics of fear, Roger is able to woo through sympathy. In this sense, one could defy Arthur Pollard’s claim that Preston is ‘subsidiary’, existing ‘for the purposes of the plot…rather than being in any sense an independent character’ (Pollard 1967, 242); Gaskell uses Preston as a means to explore Darwinian sexual selection and the importance of sympathy as well as physicality in the struggle for masculine superiority.

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Preston is also significant in that he gives Gaskell a means to discuss gentlemanliness; whereas North and South tackles this issue more directly, most of the men in Wives and Daughters do not have their status as gentlemen questioned, except, significantly, Preston. Hyacinth exclaims, ‘Well, really, I begin to have some faith in long descent. What a gentleman [Osborne] is! How agreeable and polite! So different from that forward Mr Preston’ (WD, 240); likewise, the Squire declares, ‘I don’t know who you are, but I’ve known land-agents who were gentlemen, and I’ve known some who were not. You belong to this last set, young man’ (355). Similarly, Molly instructs Preston to come to her ‘father’s house, and ask to see [Cynthia] openly, and like a gentleman’ (486). Further, when she meets him to ask for Cynthia’s letters, she tells him that he has no right to keep them: ‘simply you have no right at all, as a gentleman, to keep a girl’s letters when she asks for them back again, much less to hold them over her as a threat’ (504). When Molly threatens to tell Lady Harriet, she knows that Preston will not ‘dare to refuse Lord Cumnor’, and his reaction is—significantly—about his gentlemanliness and his manliness: He felt at once that he should not dare; that, clever land-agent as he was, and high up in the earl’s favour in that account, yet that the conduct of which he had been guilty in regard to the letters, and the threats which he had held out respecting them, were just what no gentleman, no honourable man, no manly man, could put up with in any one about him. He knew that much, and he wondered how she, the girl standing before him, had been clever enough to find it out. He forgot himself for an instant in admiration of her. There she stood, frightened, yet brave, not letting go her hold on what she meant to do, even when things seemed most against her; and besides, there was something that struck him most of all perhaps, and which shows the kind of man he was—he perceived that Molly was as unconscious that he was a young man, and she a young woman, as if she had been a pure angel of heaven. (507)

Though this scene is outwardly focused on the issue of Cynthia’s letters, it prompts Preston’s inward evaluation of his masculinity; further, though Molly’s threat to tell the Cumnors seems like—and may have been intended as—a call to a higher class for help, for Preston, it serves as a call to challenge his manhood. Preston presents three labels of masculinity: the gentleman, the honourable man, and the manly man. This list could be interpreted in two ways: first, these categories of masculinity are

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separate enough to require differentiation in a list, or second, these categories are synonymous and used almost repetitively for effect. In stressing that none of these categories of masculinity align with Preston’s actions, Gaskell is clearly still grappling with Thornton and Margaret’s debate about distinguishing a manly man from a gentleman. Further, Gaskell emphasises that an awareness of what makes a man and a gentleman is estimable, for Preston stops to admire Molly’s cleverness. Molly, however, seems to be unaware of her own gender role; she takes on a masculine role as the defender of Cynthia’s honour, yet she ‘did not know how she had conquered’ (508) Preston, and she also fails to realise the assumptions Mr Sheepshanks may make in seeing her ‘tête-à-tête’ with Preston: the ‘implied sense did not sink into her mind’ and ‘she was only feeling how she had gone out glorious and confident, and was coming back to Cynthia defeated’ (508). Gaskell stresses that Preston’s noticing Molly’s lack of awareness ‘shows the kind of man he was’: Preston is ever-aware of the social implications that the power of his masculinity can give him, and he acts accordingly, laying ‘his hand firmly on her arm’ as Mr Sheepshanks approaches. Molly makes two erroneous interpretations relating to her lack of insight into gender roles; first, just like Margaret Hale in the strike scene, she fails to see that her interactions could be read in a romantic lens, thus tarnishing her reputation; and second, she fails to see that she has in fact succeeded in convincing Preston by unwittingly threatening his masculinity. Unlike Preston’s questionable gentlemanliness and predatory manliness, Osborne is undoubtedly a gentleman but his physical manliness is called into question. Similarly, he is set in contrast to his brother Roger. Osborne could have been placed in this chapter’s ‘fathers and husbands’ category, but his inability to support himself or his family makes him so deficient as father and husband that one is forced him to consider him more as a son than a father. Osborne spends lavishly on his wife, running further into debt, and he ‘looked upon [her] rather as the future mistress of Hamley Hall than as the wife of a man who was wholly dependent on others’ (319). Though Molly is naïve, her insight is apt: ‘that was not her idea of the conduct of a married man; who, she imagined, ought to have a house and servants, and pay rent and taxes, and live with his wife’ (242). Though taxes may not be the first classification of the model husband, the fact that Osborne’s not supporting his wife financially comes to mind before the fact that he does not live with her is telling. Valerie Sanders argues, ‘[t]he fact that we never see Osborne as a father reinforces

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the point that such manhood as he has acquired through his relationship with Aimée remains slight and superficial’ (Sanders 2010, 62). Further, whereas Roger experiences a ‘transition into manhood’ through ‘exposure to a challenging foreign climate and an all-male environment’ (WD, 62), Osborne does not go through a similar maturation but rather remains stagnant at home and dependent on others. Roger is named after his father, Osborne after his mother; Roger is ‘clumsy and heavily built, like his father’, whereas Osborne’s appearance ‘had all the grace and refinement of his mother’s’ (42) as the ‘two were cast in the same mould, both physically and mentally—because he bore her maiden name’ (83). The Squire declares that a stranger would not ‘take [him] for a gentleman, with [his] red face, great hands and feet, and thick figure’ and that, likewise, ‘Roger is like me, a Hamley, of Hamley, and no one who sees [Roger] in the street will ever think that red-brown, big-boned, clumsy chap is of gentle blood’ (74). In contrast, Osborne ‘takes after his mother, who couldn’t tell her great-grandfather from Adam…and has a girl’s delicate face, and a slight make, and hands and feet as small as a lady’s’ (74). Though the Squire assumes others can ‘read’ gentlemanliness in physical features, he distinguishes between heritage and gentlemanliness and suggests that he views Roger as the ‘true’ Hamley physically. Deirdre d’Albertis argues that ‘[d]ue to the overdetermined emphasis of his maternal heritage, Osborne is neither truly aristocratic nor successfully masculinized’ (d’Albertis 1997, 142) and suggests that Roger, with his shared name and physical resemblance to his father, is the ‘true descendent of his noble father’ and ‘prov[es] himself to be the true heir’ through his successes (142). This analysis is compelling, for it suggests that though others see Osborne’s status as first-born as significant, it ultimately is emptied of meaning; further, it suggests that Osborne’s effeminate characteristics and Roger’s masculine ones would prove Roger the ‘true’ heir, rather than any legal right. Osborne is given privilege within the family, down to his preferences for food, drink, seating, and warmth, ‘for he was the heir, and he was delicate, and he was the clever one of the family’ (WD, 89). Further, his mother declares, ‘the Squire…thought always so much of him as his heir and firstborn darling. How he has loved him! How I have loved him! I sometimes have thought of late that we’ve almost done that good Roger injustice’ (200). This comment is key, for it both emphasises how Osborne was highly esteemed largely for his status rather than for his character and how little Roger was valued. Gaskell problematises valuing masculinity

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based on status, for Mrs Hamley eventually realises that she has ‘made such an idol of [her] beautiful Osborne; and he turns out to have feet of clay, not strong enough to stand firm on the ground’ (201). Gaskell’s language echoes her portrayal of Branwell Brontë in The Life of Charlotte Brontë: though the Brontës had high hopes for Branwell, he lacks a ‘strong will […] and a resoluteness of purpose’ (LCB, 105) and ‘he never thinks of seeking employment […and] has rendered himself incapable of filling any respectable station in life’ (LCB, 232). Though Osborne is not as dramatic a figure as Branwell, with his opium, alcoholism, and affairs, he fulfils a similar purpose: to highlight the problematic nature of over-valuing one family member based solely on gender or status as heir. Osborne is ‘fine’; Roger looks ‘like a strong-built, cheerful, intelligent country farmer’ (WD, 186). To the outward eye, the brothers are completely different; further, they use their eyes differently: in describing their reactions to Molly, Gaskell notes, ‘Still her appearance was extremely improved, even to Osborne’s critical eye. Roger sought rather to discover in her looks and expression whether she was happy or not; his mother had especially charged him to note all these signs’ (187). Osborne is, to outward appearances, more refined; he is, however, also more interested in superficial outward appearances, whereas Roger is more interested in inner happiness, with regard both to Molly and his mother. Similarly, Osborne’s focus on the superficial is echoed on his superficial pleasantness: ‘Osborne was extremely polite…but he appeared to be unwilling to show [Molly] any of the deeper feelings of his heart, and almost ashamed of his exhibition of emotion the night before. He spoke to her as any agreeable young man speaks to any pleasant young lady; but Molly almost resented this’ (216). Osborne’s superficiality contrasts with Roger’s practicality; Roger prefers ‘a life of more activity and adventure, Roger was to be—anything; he was useful and practical, and fit for all the employments from which Osborne was shut out by his fastidiousness, and his (pseudo) genius’ (269). The dash creates a pause, making this passage seem almost conversational or stream-of-consciousness, though it is unclear who is thinking, just as it is unclear whether the narrator or a character identifies Osborne’s genius as ‘pseudo’. In contrast to Roger’s ability to do or be anything, Osborne has no professional future; Valerie Sanders compares Osborne to other ‘idle sons’ in Victorian literature, arguing that many novels ‘tell and retell this same story of masculine non-achievement, and

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evolutionary failure’ showing that there was a ‘cultural fear of the fatherson conflict and male inertia’ as ‘gentlemanly idleness in sons threatened to destroy everything the father had built up’, thus signifying ‘the frailty of the fathers’ achievement, and the sons’ potential to destroy a lifetime’s effort and self-denial—essentially by doing nothing’. She writes: The ‘idle son’ theme thus focalizes several intergenerational issues for Victorian men, including the failure of responsible masculinity, rejection of Christian manliness, the miseducation of the male middle-to-upper classes, and evolutionary and social decline from the standards of the previous hard-working generation. In narrative terms their lives represent an antiBildunsgroman…ending in death, exile, or humiliation. (Sanders 2010, 64–65)

Sanders’s argument makes it clear that Gaskell is not establishing a simple binary but is responding to cultural anxiety about superficial, idle masculinity and about generational conflict. Osborne is frequently likened to a woman; his father declares, ‘I sometimes think he’s half a woman himself, he spends so much money and is so unreasonable’ (WD, 412) and notes he would be ‘ashamed to have spent as much time at my looking-glass as if I’d been a girl’ (263). Though the Squire’s comments perhaps say more about the Squire’s views on female consumption, unreasonableness, and vanity than about Osborne’s womanliness, it remains significant that his father frequently makes this connection to effeminacy, as do others: when Molly meets him, he is ‘beautiful and languid-looking, almost as frail in appearance as his mother, whom he strongly resembled’ and ‘effeminate in movement’, ‘graceful in the extreme’, and ‘dainty in eating, and had anything but a Homeric appetite’ (173). Likewise, Cynthia declares, ‘If ever a man looked a bachelor, he did. Poor Osborne! with his fair delicate elegance,— he looked so young and boyish!’ (594). A key difference, however, is that for Cynthia, his delicate elegance links him not to feminine terms but to boyish ones; nevertheless, this distinction still implies a lack, a manhood not fully formed. Though Roger is ‘turning out by far the most distinguished man’, he is ‘practical’ and interested in ‘all out-of-doors things’ (259); in contrast, Osborne is ‘what is commonly called “fine;” delicate almost to effeminacy in dress and in manner; careful in small observances’ (260).

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Deirdre d’Albertis argues, ‘Gaskell’s insistence on Osborne’s effeminacy…stresses his essential lack of “natural” masculinity’ (d’Albertis 1997, 153); this use of ‘natural’ is suggestive, for it draws attention both to a model of masculinity that seems innate and to the link between masculinity and the outdoors, which the Squire and Roger love. In contrast, Osborne’s avoidance of the outdoors marks him, in the Squire’s mind, as unmanly: ‘Osborne either was really an invalid, or had sunk into invalid habits, and made no effort to rally. If his father urged him to go out…Osborne would [make] excuse[s] for stopping in-doors over his books. He would saunter out on the sunny side of the house in a manner that the Squire considered as both indolent and unmanly’ (WD, 451). Gaskell makes it deliberately unclear whether Osborne is ill or has merely adopted the habits, and he is physically and emotionally distanced from his father by these habits and by his ‘unmanly’ attitudes. Not only does Osborne takes after his mother in name and features, but he also, as Hughes and Lund argue, ‘ultimately reproduces his mother’s invalidism (and early death)’ (Hughes 1999, 28). If one were to use North and South’s John Thornton’s criteria for judging men and gentlemen, Osborne’s lack of strength and endurance would mark his failures as a man, just as his relations with his father and family mark his failures as a gentleman. Where Osborne fails as a son, Roger succeeds, finding professional success and supporting Osborne and his family financially, though ‘Osborne was apt occasionally [to forget] that out of his income Roger gave up so large a portion for the maintenance of his brother’s wife’ (WD, 370). Roger’s career gives Gaskell the opportunity to address new and old interpretations of worth; when Roger’s academic achievements earn him a prestigious invitation by the Hollingfords, the Squire is confused, assuming Roger has been invited not because of his research but because of a misinterpretation of his name: ‘They think the eldest son was sure to be called after his father, Roger—Roger Hamley, junior. It’s as plain as pike-staff’ (316). Though Osborne feels ‘a string of selfreproach mingling with his generous pride in his brother’, he corrects his father, explaining that Roger is ‘getting a name’ and becoming known as a ‘first-rate fellow’; nevertheless, the squire believes, ‘[t]hey ought to have asked Osborne. He’s the representative of the Hamleys, if I’m not; and they can’t get me, let ‘em try ever so’ (316). The Squire’s misreading of the invitation shows his failure to understand the changing times and

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the new ‘meritocracy’; Osborne understands the invitation but is somewhat nettled by his own failure; and Roger stands out as the Hamley that society seeks, based on the name he is creating, rather than the name—first or last—that he was given. It is his scientific name rather than his familial one that spreads beyond Hollingford; Mrs Kirkpatrick notes, ‘Sure you do not mean the famous traveller, Hamley, about whose discoveries all our scientific men are so much excited’ (637), and Lady Cumnor deems him ‘the famous traveller—the scientific Mr Hamley’ (639). Roger’s career also gives Gaskell a chance to explore new scientific theories. Roger journeys around Africa ‘in pursuit of his scientific objects’ (620). His interest in science is not due to fame or money but rather intellectual curiosity: ‘He was so great a lover of nature that, without any thought, but habitually, he always avoided treading unnecessarily on any plant; who knew what long-sought growth or insect might develop itself in what which now appeared but insignificant?’ (117). This interest in all beings of all sizes sets him apart from his father and those who are interested primarily in birth and rank. This wide-ranging sympathy is of the utmost value to Gaskell and points to Roger as the model of progress against the other models of masculinity in the text. Additionally, unlike Gibson, he fosters similar interests in Molly, who then discusses Cuvier’s Le Règne Animal (1816) with Lord Hollingford, highlighting Gaskell’s interest in education for both sexes. Many critics have linked Roger to Gaskell’s distant cousin, Charles Darwin (cf. Stoneman 2006, 125; Sanders 1929, 133), following Gaskell’s lead of comparing Roger to Darwin in a letter to George Smith: ‘Roger is rough, & unpolished—but works out for himself a certain name in Natural Science,—is tempted by a large offer to go round the world (like Charles Darwin) as a naturalist…’ (Letters , 732). Others have located possible inspirations in Dr Allman, a naturalist and explorer (Gérin 1976, 277–278; Debrabant 2002, 15), or Charles Crompton, a Cambridge wrangler engaged to Gaskell’s daughter (Wright 1965, 221). Further, in July 1865, the Portico Library records list William Gaskell as borrowing (perhaps for his wife) Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selborne (1789), a book which greatly interested Darwin (Healy 2017, A101) and which could have further inspired Gaskell. Mary Debrabant contends that Gaskell’s Unitarian background ‘argue[s] in favour of [her] acquaintance with contemporary research in evolutionary biology’ (Debrabant 2002, 14), since Unitarians’ interest in science and rational thought and liberal interpretation of the Bible ‘led them to

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engage in early discussions of evolutionary theory’ (14); further, Debrabant mentions that Gaskell and Darwin met occasionally as he was writing between 1851 and 1856, so it is not unlikely that he discussed his ideas with her (15). Further, Gaskell’s father, William Stevenson, published a pamphlet, Remarks on the Very Inferior Utility of Classical Learning (1786), promoting the study of chemistry and natural history. Edgar Wright is quick to dismiss Roger’s scientific career: ‘This “science” is admittedly rather vague and reasonably gentlemanly, something biological and anatomical and not at all dirty or ugly; it harmonizes with the charm and quietness of his surroundings…The hero…will make his way in the world by it instead of by being a “gentleman”’ (Wright 1965, 208). Though his argument is contradictory in claiming the science as both gentlemanly and the opposite, the biggest flaw is that he suggests Gaskell does not appear altogether focused on the details of Roger’s research without looking at the ways in which she applies naturalist thought to her work itself. Gaskell is clearly interested in evolutionary theory, historic time, and progress; as such, as Patsy Stoneman notes, the novel reflects ‘the most advanced preoccupations of its time’, rather than presenting a ‘dreamy retreat into rural nostalgia’ (Stoneman 2006, 125). Further, Phoebe Poon argues that ‘Roger’s acts in facilitating the law of primogeniture and allowing himself to be supplanted appear contradictory to the Darwinian laws of competition’ (Poon 2010, 202). Indeed, Roger makes sure that Osborne’s son is put ‘at once into his rightful and legal place’ (WD, 621). This action shocks Mrs Gibson, who had assumed he would want the opposite: ‘Poor Roger! to find himself supplanted by a child when he comes home’ (621). This action could be read as Roger’s not being interested in the traditional role of heir in charge of the estate or as his caring so deeply about what is ‘correct’ that he ensures Osborne’s son earns his legal right. Regarding the latter, Gaskell makes it clear that when Roger hears of Osborne’s death, he is allowed to leave the expedition, for ‘[t]hey were most of them gentleman of property, and saw the full importance of proving the marriage of an eldest son, and installing his child as the natural heir to a long-descended estate’ (620). That is not, however, to negate the former possibility, for it seems that, though Roger cares deeply for his father and his interests in the estate, his main interests lie further afield, in scientific explorations. Thus, though Roger does not compete to be the heir, as Poon comments, perhaps it proves that he is the more competitive male, seeking intellectual and exploratory values over inherited wealth.

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Roger is physically strong, allowing him to outlive Osborne and to succeed in his career. This strength is highlighted throughout the text, suggesting Gaskell’s focus on physical health not only as it relates to Darwinian survival but also to those elements of historic masculinity that will progress to contemporary society. Gibson notes that Osborne does not have the ‘strong health’ or ‘thoroughly good constitution’ that enable Roger to work, for Roger’s tutor remarks that ‘only half of Roger’s success was owing to his mental powers; the other half was owing to his perfect health, which enabled him to work harder and more continuously than most men without suffering’ and that ‘he had never known any one with an equal capacity for mental labour’ (385). Roger is a ‘tall, powerfully-made young man, giving the impression of strength more than elegance’ (87), and when he returns from his expedition, he ‘looks broader, strong—more muscular’ (621) and ‘quite a strong grown-up man’ (628). His maturity and manliness are linked to this strength, and Gaskell makes it clear that he is not only physically but also mentally strong. In contrast to the ‘effeminate’ Osborne, Roger is strong and physically ‘manly’; in contrast to Preston, he is sympathetic and rational, not predatory and threatening. When he first meets Molly, who is crying at the news of her father’s remarriage, he initially ‘thought it would be kinder to leave her fancying herself unobserved’, but realises she is too far away for his mother to reach her; thus, ‘whether it was right or wrong, delicate or obtrusive, when he heard the sad voice talking again, in such tones of uncomforted, lonely misery, he turned back’ (118). Roger is not governed by notions of social correctness but rather touched by Molly’s misery. Though she attempts to hide her tears, he is forthright and asks her, ‘Has anything happened?—anything in which I can help you, I mean; for, of course, I’ve no right to make the inquiry, if it is any private sorrow, in which I can be of no use’ (118). Immediately, Roger comes across as both sympathetic and useful in an almost medical way, noticing Molly’s symptoms of paleness, realising she is about to faint, and using his resources to be ‘off like a shot to some spring of water that he knew of in the wood’ (118), bringing her water in a leaf ‘cup’. His diagnosis is apt, for it ‘did her good’ and she is able to walk again. Roger’s actions are dictated partly by his scientific nature and partly by his sympathetic nature, for he starts ‘breaking off and examining one or two abnormal leaves of the ash-tree, partly from the custom of his nature, partly to give her time to recover’ (118). After collecting herself,

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Molly looks at Roger tearfully, ‘with a dumb appeal for sympathy’ as ‘her quivering lips formed the word “Yes,” though her voice made no sound’ (119). This language echoes that in Mary Barton, emphasising Gaskell’s interest in garnering sympathy for the inarticulate; however, unlike the working-class men, Molly is not left voiceless because of her class status but because of her emotional status—though both of these have complicated and gendered undertones. Roger wishes that his mother were present instead as she would be a more ‘natural’—feminine—comforter, and he comforts Molly rationally: he speaks ‘almost as if he was reasoning the matter out with himself’ (119). Roger’s interest in science leads him to encounter the crying Molly in the first place, and he supplants his own plans out of sympathy for her; his scientific focus on the specifics of the situation allows him to marshal his sympathy productively, though his sympathy is bounded by the rational limits he imposes: ‘[h]e felt as if he had no right to hear more of Mr. Gibson’s family life…than was absolutely necessary for him, in order that he might comfort and help the crying girl’ (120). Roger’s blend of sympathy and science helps Molly, who ‘admits it [did] her good’ (123), and he proves a more effective comforter than the maternal figure Mr Gibson had been seeking for her—and whose existence prompts this very scene. Though Roger may find Molly’s grief ‘[u]nreasonable and possibly exaggerated’, he acknowledges that it is ‘real suffering’ and ‘took some pains to lighten it, in his own way’; using his microscope, he ‘tried to interest her in his pursuit, cherished her first morsel of curiosity, and nursed it into a very proper desire for further information’ (124). Gaskell notes, ‘If Roger was not tender in words, he was in deeds’ (123). This language of cherishing and nursing softens Roger, making him appear all the more tender and nurturing even when using such a literally ‘scientific’ approach to Molly’s emotions. As Linda Hughes writes, ‘an impersonal scientific apparatus becomes a medium of male nurturance’ (Hughes 2007, 101). Likewise, Jenny Uglow examines the maternal language used here, arguing that like Mr Gibson, Roger ‘seeks to protect and nurture as well as define and diagnose’ (Uglow 1993, 584). Significantly, unlike Mr Gibson, who wants to limit Molly’s education, Roger becomes her mentor, giving her books on the matter and ‘translating the slightly pompous and technical language into homely every-day speech’ (WD, 124). Roger’s mentorship of Molly vitally marks his difference both from Mr Gibson and from his own father, whose marriage was not companionate or intellectually or socially fulfilling to his wife. This generational change

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is key, for it suggests Gaskell’s optimism for modern masculinity. As Edgar Wright notes, Molly and Roger are the only pair with a ‘marriage of true minds’ and ‘balanced partnership’ (Wright 1965, 218), and their early relationship shows, as Robin Colby emphasises, that male–female friendships are possible and do not have to revolve solely around courtship and romantic involvements (Colby 1995, 94). As their relationship reveals, Gaskell appears more invested in character (cf. Wright 1965, 224) and in affection (cf. Craik 1975, 242) than in passion. Ultimately, their relationship offers hope and optimism for the future; their union represents a companionate, sympathetic, intellectual match. Perhaps it is best that Wives and Daughters remains unfinished; Gaskell seems to have struggled with conclusions, particularly with finding a suitable place for men within her texts’ conclusions, often killing them or banishing them, be it to Canada or Spain. Osborne’s death, however, does not seem like an ‘easy’ solution; instead his death seems inevitable. He lacks ‘manly’ strength and vigour, he lacks any inclination towards progress, and he fails to provide for his wife and child. Though Roger may seem more of a ‘Hamley’ than Osborne, Gaskell may not have been radical enough to overturn the legal inheritance rights of an old family to make the more ‘deserving’ son heir. Thus Osborne’s death opens up the space for Roger to be deemed the rightful heir; by having Osborne produce a son—and, significantly, a son who is not of estimable breeding but brings vigorous new blood to the family line—and by having Roger actively work to ensure that son becomes heir, Gaskell dismantles the notions that lineage is critical and that inheritance is the ultimate goal. Though perhaps not radical, these points are critical for, while men such as the Squire see worth in bloodlines and women such as Mrs Gibson see value in inheritance, Osborne’s strong son and Roger’s physical fortitude imply that ‘biological inheritance’ (Poon 2010, 201) is just as important. Roger’s ability to ‘pus[h] his way up’ (WD, 655) implies a new social structure, a meritocracy based on intellectual and physical worth and the ability to adapt and succeed. Roger’s professional success allows his father to proceed with the drainage works on the estate and supports his brother’s wife and child; without Roger, the family’s legacy would be naught. Further, not only does Osborne’s child represent a mixing of bloodlines over classes and nations, but Roger’s forthcoming nuptials to Molly ‘blend the gentry and professional middle classes and enrich the family bloodline’ (Leighton 2013, 498). Whereas Leighton and Surridge argue that Osborne’s ‘death thus simply reinforces Roger’s place as the

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“first” son in evolutionary and economic terms’ (498), Roger himself ensures this is not the case. He gains more freedom—geographically and professionally—by not being tied to the estate. Roger’s scientific interests are mirrored in the novel’s overall interest in the effect of time and evolutionary change. In his ability to blend nurturance with a scientific mind, to blend sympathy with action, Roger represents an optimistic outlook on generational changes for masculinity.

Note 1. Though Reed was a minister and philanthropist, not a medical doctor, he is included in this list because he founded the Royal Hospital for Incurables as well as ‘idiot’ asylums and orphan asylums.

CHAPTER 8

Conclusion

Gaskell’s final work may have a happy ending, with the promise of Roger’s and Molly’s upcoming nuptials, yet it continues to follow Gaskell’s trend of struggling to find conclusions with her main male characters alive and in the same country as that in which they began. Though she herself died before she could finish Wives and Daughters , her editor at the Cornhill, Frederick Greenwood, was certain that ‘[h]ad the writer lived, she would have sent her hero back to Africa forthwith; and those scientific parts of Africa are a long way from Hamley’ (WD, 683). While one can be assured that Roger will return, he must first follow in the footsteps of Jem Wilson, Frederick Hale, and Edward Holdsworth in being expelled from England, just as Osborne Hamley joins John Barton, Harry Carson, Mr Hale, Mr Bell, John Boucher, Philip Hepburn, and Daniel Robson in death. Gaskell was conscious of this habit and wrote to Dickens, ‘I think a better title than N. & S. [North and South] would have been “Death & Variations.” There are 5 deaths, each beautifully suited to the character of the individual’ (Letters , 324). Ruth may seem an exception to this pattern, for the eponymous heroine dies while the male leads survive. That said, Ruth’s death weakens the remaining men. Her son Leonard is depressed: ‘He neither spoke nor cried for many hours…he was so weak, and his pulse so low, that all who loved him feared for his life’ (RU , 362); and her friend Benson’s ‘face was sunk and hollow, like that of one but partially recovered from illness’ (362). Moreover, Bellingham not only has a new identity as Donne by © The Author(s) 2020 M. Lowe, Masculinity in the Work of Elizabeth Gaskell, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48397-5_8

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the novel’s close and becomes ‘feeble and nervous’ and ‘very shivery, and impatient of the state of indecision to which his bodily weakness had reduced him’ (363), but he also is expelled geographically from the conclusion, having left town and the narrative closure at Ruth’s funeral. The novel ends with an emphasis on sympathy; masculine strength and virility have no place in Gaskell’s conclusion. One could argue that Gaskell creates a pattern not only of systematically excluding male characters from her textual resolutions but also of excluding traditional or stereotypical masculine characteristics. Men associated with violence—John Barton, Daniel Robson, John Boucher— are removed from the texts, as are those associated with virile manliness and swashbuckling adventure, such as Holdsworth and Kinraid. Instead, Gaskell places value on characteristics traditionally associated with women, such as domestic nurturance and sympathy. That is not to say that she only praises conventionally feminine traits, for she values female characters with strength and independence and deems it a ‘puzzle’ to render John Thornton ‘large and strong and tender, and yet a master’ (Letters , 321). This balance between strength and tenderness in both male and female characters is key for Gaskell, and it becomes clear that, for her, neither gender can function in a vacuum; men and women should both embody traits that may be considered by some to be solely masculine or feminine. In other words, Gaskell argues that both masculinity and femininity are relational. Though many critics see Gaskell as a conventional author, this perspective on gender and shared humanity is unconventional. As John Tosh explains, ‘this was the period when belief in sexual difference was more absolute than at any time before or since. On a foundation of anatomical and physiological distinctions, intellect, emotions and character were all interpreted in a sexually polarized way, which was reinforced by the different patterns of education for boys and girls’ (Tosh 2007, 7). Feminists have long argued that femininity is a social construct; Gaskell’s works show that masculinity, too, is socially constructed. She is keenly aware of the influence of context on shaping views of masculinity, and she examines the contexts of region, historic change, and class structures as they affect representations of manliness and gentlemanliness. Gaskell draws on what she experiences first-hand, but she does not merely depict her personal recollections of Manchester, Knutsford, and Whitby and the models of masculinity she witnesses; rather, she draws on a variety of approaches to gender and multiple geographical, historical, and cultural influences. She engages with a range of contemporary

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discourses, from the rhetoric of sympathy and the religious principles of Unitarianism to scientific theories of evolution, debates on industrialisation and social transformation, and political ideologies such as Chartism. Moreover, she participates in literary intertextuality, responding to and re-shaping fictional characters and adapting and challenging her contemporaries’ treatment of manliness. Likewise, she experiments with fictional forms, utilising a variety of genres to explore different approaches to masculinity; further, her works cannot be classified simplistically as industrial, domestic, historic, or gothic, for each text invokes a multitude of literary styles in its examination of the complexity of masculinity. Gaskell’s response to a diversity of existing conceptions of masculinity exhibits her multifaceted approach to gender; just as she defies simple categories of form, she denies simplistic categories of what makes a man or a gentleman. By drawing on a multiplicity of contexts, Gaskell rejects an essentialist or monolithic model of masculinity. In making it clear that masculinity cannot be neatly defined and that there are multiple culturally and historically specific masculinities, Gaskell’s nuanced approach to gender ultimately makes her struggle with the form of the novel. In other words, because she recognises that masculinity is a category that cannot be contained, she grapples with containing the models of masculinity she creates within the novel’s resolution. What could be classed as a flaw or failure in novelistic resolution is, however, a strength of Gaskell’s in terms of depicting gender, for she realises the impossibility of having one ideal of manhood and one neatly contained plot of masculinity.1 Thomas Carlyle’s famous quotation—‘The old ideal of manhood has grown obsolete and the new is still invisible to us, and we grope after it, one clutching this phantom, another that’ (Carlyle 1899, 29)—is as fitting an introduction to this book as it is a conclusion. Throughout her writing career, Gaskell attempts to find an ideal of manhood. In her industrial texts, she explores potential new ideals of masculinity in the nurturing working-class father and in enlightened mill-owners; in her later texts, she turns to the historic past to delve into old ideals that could have been worth reviving or remoulding in Victorian England. In addition to delving into different time periods, she searches for models of masculinity in different classes, generations, and regions; her search extends into her contemporaries’ texts, as she re-frames the narratives of masculinity found therein and adapts them to suit her ends. One can witness her groping after and clutching at different ideals of masculinity across class, region, time, and genre; ultimately, however, she struggles to find resolutions for

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these models of manhood. Though her works vary in drawing on different contexts in their exploration of gender, patterns of her representations of masculinity and manliness emerge; in repeatedly dispelling male characters from the resolutions of her texts, it becomes clear that Gaskell’s efforts to find a new ideal are—in Carlyle’s words—limited to phantoms, to fleeting creations who cannot be neatly resolved.

Note 1. Gaskell’s struggle with the form of the novel could easily merit its own book. Josie Billington compellingly argues that ‘one of the hallmarks of Gaskell’s mature realism is its inconclusiveness’ in her discussion of Gaskell’s ‘tendency toward not concluding’ in Wives and Daughters (Billington 2016, 23) and it ‘unresolved richness and irresolvability’ (29). While this book argues that some of Gaskell’s early works may feel particularly and frustratingly inconclusive, with John Barton haunting the conclusion of Mary Barton and Gaskell’s conflicted struggle in her project of sympathy for the working-class male, Billington celebrates Gaskell’s final text as ‘radically inclusive [in] its emphatic realisation or dramatic revelation’ (31). By elucidating these positive aspects of inconclusiveness, Billington can also help the reader to see the strength in Gaskell’s struggle with neatly containing her increasingly nuanced views of masculinity.

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Index

A Ablow, Rachel, 21 Adams, James Eli, 7–10, 177, 178, 193, 194, 197, 198 Antinucci, Raffaella, 86 Armstrong, Nancy, 55, 93 Arnold, Matthew, 86, 170, 171 Avery, Simon, 169

B Bakhtin, Mikhail, 73, 85, 98, 103 Balibar, Etienne, 37 Beer, Patricia, 24, 139 Betensky, Carolyn, 17, 20, 21, 27, 63 Billington, Josie, 140, 216 Bodenheimer, Rosemarie, 39, 82, 101 Bonaparte, Felicia, 11, 67, 105, 175, 189 Botting, Fred, 49 Bottum, Joseph, 131 Brill, Barbara, 15 Brontë, Branwell, 203 Brontë, Charlotte, 10, 12, 23, 149 Brontë, Emily, 178

C Carlyle, Thomas, 2–5, 12, 27, 41, 42, 44, 55, 68, 69, 74, 86, 87, 103, 188, 197, 215, 216 ‘Characteristics’, 198 French Revolution, The, 68–69 Chapman, Edward, 31, 33, 105, 127 Chapple, J.A.V., 14, 16 Craik, W.A., 1, 112, 125, 149, 152, 161, 197, 210 D d’Albertis, Deirdre, 105, 161, 162, 167, 169, 174, 175, 198, 202, 205 Darwin, Charles, 13, 164, 184, 193, 198, 199, 207 David, Deirdre, 52, 69, 99, 130–137, 140–142, 144 Davidoff, Leonore, 12 Davis, Philip, 12, 13 Dawson, Graham, 151 Demoor, Marysa, 113, 114 Denisoff, Dennis, 29 Derrick, Scott, 124

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 M. Lowe, Masculinity in the Work of Elizabeth Gaskell, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48397-5

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INDEX

Dickens, Charles, 12, 83, 129 David Copperfield, 129–137, 139–146 Dombey and Son, 142 Hard Times , 72, 129 Disraeli, Benjamin, 31 Sybil , 31, 33 Drautzburg, Anja, 10 Durbach, Nadja, 116 E Easson, Angus, 105, 112, 139, 140, 143, 146, 149, 163, 170, 184 Edgeworth, Maria, 29 Ehrenpreis, Anne, 105 Eliot, George Adam Bede, 114–116, 149 Mill on the Floss, The, 117 ‘Natural History of German Life, The’, 21–22 Engels, Friedrich, 12, 26, 27, 30, 35, 36 Condition of the Working Class in England, The, 26 F Forster, John, 28, 33 Forster, W.E., 72 Foster, Shirley, 13, 27, 32, 33, 63, 67, 93, 95, 99, 105, 127, 139, 144, 145, 151, 152, 171–173, 179, 180 Freud, Sigmund, 49, 198 Fromer, Julie, 58 G Gardiner, Judith Kegan, 5, 6 Gaskell, Elizabeth Letters , 2, 3, 100, 101, 127, 129, 153, 158, 161, 178, 181, 206, 213, 214

Novels Cousin Phillis , 129–146 Mary Barton, 25–55 North and South, 57–104 Ruth, 105–128 Sylvia’s Lovers , 149–181 Wives and Daughters , 183–211 Other Works Cranford, 22 Life of Charlotte Brontë, The, 23, 150, 187, 203 Gaskell, William, 13, 14, 16, 55, 129 Gérin, Winifred, 106, 139, 143, 151, 153, 169, 181, 189, 190, 197, 206 Gilmour, Robin, 8, 75, 77 Greg, Samuel, 63, 99–101 Greg, William Rathbone, 48, 100 Greiner, Rae, 20 Guérard, Albert J., 125 H Halberstam, Judith, 46 Hall, Catherine, 86, 87 Hansson, Heidi, 132, 146 Hardy, Barbara, 132, 140 Hardy, Thomas, 125 Mayor of Casterbridge, The, 169 Harman, Barbara Leah, 24, 68, 86 Harris, George, 14 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 105, 127 Scarlet Letter, The, 105–111, 116–121, 124–127 Henson, Louise, 150, 151 Herbert, T. Walter, Jr, 110 Holloway, John, 169 Holstein, Suzy Clarkson, 14 Hopkins, Annette, 129 I Ingham, Patricia, 92, 129

INDEX

J Jaffe, Audrey, 18, 20, 21, 47, 67, 122–124 Jansson, Siv, 112 Jay, Elizabeth, 23 Jenkins, Ruth, 13, 14, 22 Johnson, Claudia Durst, 109, 125

K Kingsley, Charles, 12, 45, 46, 193 Alton Locke, 33, 45 Koustinoudi, Anna, 134 Kreger, Erika, 110, 111 Kucich, John, 123

L Lee, Ying S., 6, 36, 37 Logan, Deborah Anna, 113 Louttit, Chris, 10, 64, 85, 88, 89 Lucas, John, 33, 199

M Maccall, William, 86 Machann, Clinton, 5 Mallett, Phillip, 3–7, 9, 10, 125, 129, 170 Manchester, 11–13, 25, 30, 31, 36, 38, 46, 54, 100, 102, 129, 150, 214 Marroni, Francesco, 144–146, 156, 164, 168 Martineau, Harriet, 12, 160 Marx, Karl, 12, 53, 104 Matus, Jill, 41, 91, 94, 95 Michie, Elsie, 46 Millard, Kay, 14 Mill, John Stuart, 13, 28, 55, 86, 87, 160, 170 Principles of Political Economy, 55

229

O Oppenheim, Janet, 101 Oulton, Carolyn, 132–135 P Parker, Pamela Corpron, 121, 122 Parkes, Bessie Rayner, 54 Paterson, John, 169 Pettitt, Clare, 131, 132, 143 Pikoulis, John, 76, 95 Plant, Helen, 15, 16 Pollard, Arthur, 153, 199. See also Chapple, J.A.V., Letters Portico Library, The, 12, 55, 87, 152, 185, 206 Pryke, Jo, 74, 99 R Rai, Amit, 18–20 Rogers, Philip, 130 Rose, Mary, 100 Ruskin, John, 12, 76, 81, 86, 197 ‘Of Vulgarity’, 76, 81 S Sana, Rami, 105 Sanders, Gerald DeWitt, 149, 150, 152, 169, 183, 184 Schor, Hilary, 1 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 50, 124, 134 Shakespeare, William, 155, 163 Othello, 155 Sharps, Heather, 149, 150 Sharps, John Geoffrey, 139, 183 Shaw, Marion, 176 Shelley, Mary, 44, 117 Frankenstein, 43–46 Shelston, Alan, 1, 10, 31 Shelston, Dorothy, 55 Showalter, Elaine, 5, 11, 22, 117 Shuttleworth, Sally, 69, 92

230

INDEX

Smiles, Samuel, 74, 75, 87, 197 Smith, Adam, 17, 18, 20 Smith, Sheila, 31 Stoneman, Patsy, 36, 38, 43, 46, 49, 113, 138, 164, 165, 167, 199, 206, 207 Styler, Rebecca, 15, 16 Surridge, Lisa, 36, 39, 40, 184, 210 Sussman, Herbert, 3, 6–10, 60, 64, 80, 88, 91, 92, 102, 103, 109, 111, 177, 178, 192, 198 T Thomas, Keith, 176, 177 Tosh, John, 4, 6–9, 59, 78, 79, 81, 87, 91, 92, 103, 109, 160, 166, 188, 190, 192, 214 Toussaint-Thiriet, Benjamin, 16 Tromp, Marlene, 116 Trower, Shelley, 22 Tucker, Herbert, 150 Twinn, Frances, 150 Tylor, Edward Burnett, 150, 154, 171, 179 U Uglow, Jenny, 16, 33, 43, 49, 105, 106, 127, 129, 138, 139, 143,

144, 146, 155, 164, 166, 167, 184, 209 V Vanden Bossche, Chris, 171 Vann, J Don, 129 W Wainwright, Valerie, 86 Watts, Ruth, 13, 14, 16, 160, 166, 194 Webb, R.K., 13–16 Wheeler, Michael, 14 Whitehead, Stephen, 5–7 Williams, Raymond, 32, 34 Williams, Victoria, 139 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 158 Wootton, Sarah, 88 Wright, Edgar, 13, 14, 143, 152, 153, 169, 206, 207, 210 Y Yarrow, Philip, 152 Z Zlotnick, Susan, 38