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Emily Win

Research-Intensive English Senior Honors Project

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Phyllis Weliver

Agents of Activism: Uncovering Womanhood of the 1860s and 1960s

Introduction

The historical-cultural moments of the 1860s and 1960s were both rich in protests for

womens equality in the workplace and the home. A traditional feminine ideal is shared between

the two centuries, but so is the activism against it. Fed up with the expected identity of women as

mothers and wives, female authors in both time periods started writing and publishing fictional

works crafting ambitious, often well-educated women as successful, passionate, and defiant of

society. Retrospectively referred to as First-Wave Feminism, from the 1850s through the 1920s

the women inside the house started to speak out for equality, specifically for voting rights in

England and America. The Woman Question truly began to develop in these cultural moments

shaped by the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Question refers to the reconsideration of

womens roles in societal and domestic affairs, specifically in marriage rights, property rights,

higher education rights, professional rights, and rights regarding their sexualities. Women began

questioning their own roles inside and outside of marriages in the nineteenth century. A similar

movement developed in the 1960s when women began to argue for their inherent equality to

men, aside from biological makeup (Evans 13). This second swell, labeled Second-Wave

Feminism, echoed the fight for voting rights in a more expansive range of identities and rights.
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More concretely, American women moved to amend the Constitution, thus playing vital roles in

establishing the Equal Rights Act. These two movements were distinct, yet influential in the lives

of single and married women, particularly female writers of both times. While political action

catalyzes the equality of women from the nineteenth century into the twentieth, the literature of

both periods compare in disturbingly similar fashions. The female activist characters from a

sampling of novels in both the 1860s and 1960s gives agency to the rising independent, equal

woman.

I will explore the agency of the female protagonists across four novels written within the

decades of 1860 and 1960 with two novels per century slice. George Eliots The Mill on the

Floss (1860) offers the characterizations of two women in provincial England: the super-

feminine bachelorette, Lucy, and the intelligent and independent rebel rouser, Maggie. Mary

Elizabeth Braddons Lady Audleys Secret (1862) presents a classic femme fatale heroine, Lady

Audley, as trapped in a circular pattern of injustice--instigated by British cultural expectations of

marriage-- where she is finally sent to an insane asylum. A similar portrayal of scandalous,

emotional, and crazy women are represented in literature one hundred years later. Margaret

Atwoods Canadian heroine, Marian, in The Edible Woman (1969) and Sylvia Plaths American

protagonist, Esther, in The Bell Jar (1963) both explore and represent women as having

intellectual, or even emotional disabilities, possibly as a consequence for breaking a male-

dominated cultural role as wife or child-bearer. Maggie and Esther compare in that they suffer

consequences for their passive nature in cultural awareness and intelligence. Lady Audley and

Marian compare in that they suffer consequences for their active nature in changing their gender

identity. Each of these women is portrayed as insane for perceiving, thinking, or acting in the

world outside of the home. The heroines identify themselves through passive and active
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mediums of agency. Unchanging in consequence and struggle, the four heroines of these novels--

Maggie, Esther, Lady Audley, and Marian--are activists of female agency in the trans-Atlantic

rise of feminism.

To accompany this argument, I have created an Omeka digital resource that explores

female archetypes throughout the 1860s and 1960s. (See agents.ongcdh.org/ with the username:

User and the password: WalterOng101.) Currently split into two exhibits, 1960 and

1860, the site takes descriptive excerpts of the protagonists and explores them through images

and Neatline mapping. The site allows for further exploration in universal concepts of feminist

literature, as well as supplemental visual representations of women in the 60s and beyond. It also

provides more visual images than a traditional paper would, which gives the advantage of

contextualization in different mediums. Most significantly, Omeka allowed me to physically

place representations of women on a map through a plugin called Neatline. In a page created for

each novel, I assigned text to parts of these female bodies that is revealed through clicking on the

different parts of the body. Drawing these representations of femininity on maps of the countries

of which they are citizens brings together the universal issues of gender identity within these four

protagonists. Agents of Activism aims to reach beyond textual analyses to assess conceptions of

feminism in literature across different continents and historical moments.

In line with tracing these different concepts, I have arranged this paper by issues affecting

the female protagonist. I begin with Maggie from The Mill on the Floss because her stark female

character acting against society is an exemplary thematic foundation to the rest of the novels and

concepts studied. Because Esther deals with her femininity in a more passive fashion like

Maggie, The Bell Jar is explored next. The issues with gender and femininity grow more

complex as I introduce Lady Audleys Secret and the multiple layers of controversy and injustice
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that Lady Audley sparks. To conclude, I explore Marians role in Atwoods complex

metaphorical novel and briefly compare Marians active agency to that of Lady Audleys. The

structure is formatted in such a way that the issues of gender roles and identity remain consistent,

even through a centurys time.

A Clever Little Girl: The Mill on the Floss: Setting the Scene

The discussion of gender roles was particularly heated in the cultural moment of 1860

when The Mill on the Floss was written and in the 1820s, when the novel is set. The Mills

publications only contributed to the controversial characterization of Maggie, the protagonist.

Once George Eliots novels started to become serialized, her readership expanded among the

marginalized and middle-class. Though her reputation was clouded by controversy and outrage

because of her identity, it gained a particular popularity among influential figures of the time

(Armitt 7). Charles Dickens raved about The Mill on the Floss for its feminine emphasis while

Leslie Stephen critiqued Eliot for her incapacity for pourtraying the opposite sex (8). Her

activism shines through in Maggie, a true agent through her struggles with identity and gender.

Maggies nonconformance is presented through her yearning for intellect and culture,

juxtaposed against her cousin Lucys late-Romantic perfection, exposing a clear social

classification as well as a system of consequence and reward. The Romantic woman placed her

ideals in a life of a rich and varied set of concerns, many focused on waning beauty, expected

duties, and proper pleasures (Looser 177). The treatment of Maggie acts as a sociopolitical

reference as to what women should not be, while Lucys class, wealth, and behavior are placed

as a foil against Maggies characteristics. When many single women experienced their husbands

deaths after they left for the colonies, they were left without a place in their towns. Elaine

Showalter names the ostracizing of Maggie as sexual anarchy arguing, Odd women were a
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social problem. Thousands had to earn their own living, rivaling men for employment...instead of

spending and husbanding the earnings of men (19).

The nature of Maggies character is in contradiction to Victorian ideals of femininity. Even

as a child, the narrator sympathizes with Maggies desire to have people think her a clever little

girl, and not to find fault with her (Eliot 61). Atypical from the normal woman in her English

village of St. Oggs, she enjoys reading and studying. As a young girl she feels pressured to run

away to the gypsies to learn and share her interests in geography with them. An oddity for her

small Victorian town, she feels ostracized by her community, even amongst the most

marginalized peoples.

Maggie rises above her male counterparts in intellect and wit. Higher education, such as

Latin and English, would have been reserved for men. The narrator highlights this inequality

commenting that Maggie feels, a gleam of triumph now and then that her understanding [is]

quite equal to these peculiarly masculine studies (Eliot 266). The notion of masculine studies

holds the weight of gender expectations. Not only is the male associated with higher education,

but education is exclusively acceptable for males. When she eventually falls in love with Philip,

a disabled son of her fathers enemy, he urges her to continue her studies because she loves it.

However, she refuses to agree out of fear that she will become worldly and cultured. Maggies

longing to reach beyond the oppressive atmosphere and culture of St. Oggs is explicit in her

interactions with her family and the other marginalized characters in the novel. I agree with Delia

da Sousa Correas assessment of Maggies identity as clashing with the small-town ideals of St.

Oggs:

Maggies personal stage of development may be in conflict with that of her family and
society, yet there is a sense that a vital part of her identity would be lost if she turned back
on these. Her stage of development is incompatible with, but not independent of, her
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social context. It is in this that her tragedy partly lies rather than in that her nature is
simply at odds with the historical boundaries within which she is trapped. (107)

This tension between her desires, experiences, and society are present both in her family and her

acquaintances. Despite Maggies harsh life circumstances, she persists with a vengeance for her

own life, telling her priest, the only thing I want is some occupation that will enable me to get

my bread and be independent (Eliot 460). These two wishes are almost impossible for Maggie,

being a poor runaway, yet educated, young woman. She eventually leaves home to stay at her

uncles and the third-person narrator echoes Maggies resilience: But she was not without

practical intentions; the love of independence was too strong an inheritance and a habit for her

not to remember that she must get her bread (456). Maggie copes with her social situation by

utilizing her feminine tasks until she can find a better option. Realizing she is caught in a cycle

of oppression, she attempts to explain this phenomenon to her brother arguing, you are a

man, Tom, and have the power, and can do something in the world (322). Maggie displays a

radical feminism to her criticizers that is striking and would have been offensive to the

conservative Victorian reader. Tom, the voice of man and society, replies, if you can do nothing,

submit to those that can (322). This moment is crucial in the literary and cultural comparison of

women functioning in society because the heroine is inevitably subject to the conditions of her

social context as well as being tragically at odds with them (Correa 106).

This paradox is explained further through the lens of a narrator who believes men and women

to be completely separate and different in their societal roles. The dynamic of the two roles is

presented as a correlation that places the blame of feminine oppression on both sexes:

But until every good man is brave, we must expect to find many good women timid: too
timid even to believe in the correctness of their own best promptings, when these would
place them in a minority. And the men at St. Oggs were not all brave by any means:
some of them were even fond of scandal--and to an extent that might have given their
conversation an effeminate character, if it had not been distinguished by masculine jokes,
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and by an occasional shrug of the shoulders at the mutual hatred of women. It was the
general feeling of the masculine mind at St. Oggs that women were not to be interfered
with in their treatment of each other. (Eliot 468)

The narrator is as socially keen as Maggie in this instance, realizing that the toxicity of female

roles is propagated by the toxicity of male gender roles. Effeminate character, masculine

jokes, and the masculine mind are terms with no true definition, but with extreme cultural

weight. The narrator draws a distinct line between the expectations of man, to be brave, and the

expectations of woman, to be timid. These characteristics, when disrupted, convolute a social

order that is against the conservative personality of St. Oggs. The narrator goes as far as to

explain that society is gendered to be a possession of the world which separates men into subject

and women into object. Maggies character is fighting out of objectivity and into subjectivity.

The narrator's assessment provides implicit reasoning for Maggies death in that an educated

woman as a subject contradicts societal order. In the eyes of St. Oggs societys, Maggie is

deserving of punishment.

Character flaws, as seen by society, are extremely present in the mannerisms and behaviors

of Maggie. However, her cousin Lucy presents herself as the opposite, alternative Victorian

model of behavior and beauty, which is a problematic performance against the 1860s portraits of

a well-educated woman like Maggie. The narrator explains the qualities of a perfect wife and

woman through the soon-to-be marriage of Stephen and Lucy: A man likes his wife to be pretty:

well, Lucy was pretty, but not to a maddening extent. A man likes his wife to be accomplished,

gentle, affectionate, and not stupid; and Lucy had all these qualifications (Eliot 342). Lucys

demeanor is plain, but pretty in that she is considered agreeable and, therefore, groomed for

marriage. Lucys compatibility with Stephen is juxtaposed with Maggies evolving, yet hopeless

feelings, for Stephen. Maggie is constantly compared to her cousin, which sets the model for
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marriage to be anyone who is opposite of Maggies wild demeanor. Unlike Maggie, no

accidents ever happened to [Lucys] clothes, and she was never uncomfortable in them (81). In

noticing Lucys clothes, Maggie remembers the recent humiliation about her hair and

confined herself to fretting and twisting, and behaving peevishly about the card-houses which

they were allowed to build till dinner, as a suitable amusement for boys and girls in their best

clothes (81). Maggie notices these behaviors and differentiates herself from Lucy and proper

children.

A very clear line is drawn between the woman who is rewarded and the woman who is

not. Kate Flint comments, The outcome, of course, is hardly as simple as this, for whilst the

blonde Lucy is left alive, and eventually marries Stephen Guest, we finally encounter her visiting

Maggies grave, a figure of grief rather than happiness (267-268). The definitive markings of

this inequality reside in the inherent differences of the engaged woman and the single woman.

The narrator comments on the difference between these women earlier in their childhood noting,

The contrast between the cousins was conspicuous (57-58). Their differences are described as

a contrast, like that:

between a rough, dark, overgrown puppy and a white kitten. Lucy put up
the neatest little rosebud mouth to be kissed; everything about her
was neat,--her little round neck, with the row of coral beads; her
little straight nose, not at all snubby; her little clear eyebrows,
rather darker than her curls, to match hazel eyes, which looked up
with shy pleasure at Maggie, taller by the head, though scarcely a
year older. Maggie always looked at Lucy with delight. (58)

Lucy has all the qualities of a woman who is admired for her beauty. Maggie is representative of

the activist woman, but Lucys representation of feminism would have been a valid identity

within the exploration of her role as potential wife. Jeanette King writes, The woman question,

in particular as it bore on womens demand for emancipation from the duties of motherhood and
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family life, was hotly debated throughout the Victorian periodThere were many women,

including feminists, who argued that womens highest fulfillment came from motherhood. (9)

Maggie is aware of Lucys participation in the more conservative identity within The Woman

Question. The comparison between the two women sets a parallel comparison between the

married and the unmarried woman. The bachelorette possesses poise, beauty, and innocence and

the unmarried woman possess qualities of intellect and danger. Maggie decides early in her life

that she wants to be independent, possibly because she does not want these qualities. Her stark

characterization is referenced on the textual mapping of her body in Agents of Activism, which

demonstrates her identity as part of what gives her a place, or lack thereof, in the world. For

example, if you click on Maggies hands, the excerpt about Maggie wanting to earn her bread

and be independent appears on the map. This association of text to hands, as part of the body,

works to bring the users closer to Maggies active needs and desires, while simultaneously

recognizing that they are inherently entering Maggies body as a platform for exposing oppressed

femininity.

Much like the rising women of the 1860s, Maggie, instead of fulfilling womens destiny

by completing, sweetening, and embellishing the existence of others, is compelled to lead an

independent and incomplete existence of [her] own (Showalter19). However, these two women

so intricately represent the narrow expression of gender available for nineteenth century women.

Lucy is left dependent, but thriving from the wealth of her family while Maggie is independent,

but poor and eventually dies in a flood. The system of consequence for independence continues

to make broad strokes through the literary and cultural painting of the alternative woman.

Ultimately, the narrator paints progressive strokes towards exposing Maggies deeply feminist

motivations, while remaining compliant with Victorian readership. Exploring the two women as
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foil images offers roots to the cultural foundation of the conservative Victorian influence in

female charactersas reflected from reality and influencing the domestic readership. Maggie is

a classic example, but movingly radical in her expressions and actions, making for a novel based

in the type of critical-cultural analysis so present in 60s literature.

Sitting In The Crotch of This Fig Tree: The Bell Jar

The notion of agency in vocational choice was cultivated in the Victorian period and

carried particularly heavy weight throughout the twentieth century in novels such as Sylvia

Plaths only novel. The Bell Jar follows Esther, a young, smart, and sociable young woman who

works for Ladies Day, a popular magazine promoting the expectations of women in fashion,

behavior, and class. If this magazine were a real publication, it would have influenced and

propagated popular images of domestic women. This magazine vaguely replicates Ladies Home

Journal, a womens magazine that began in 1883 that helped to solidify ideas of gender

difference by cultivating a distinctly feminine consumer culture (National Womens History

Museum). Within the first few years of publication, the journal had over 270,000 subscribers,

marking its mass popularity and impact in twentieth century feminine ideals.

Ethers involvement in this type of magazine, specifically Ladies Day, manifests itself in

a type of suffocating from these expectations, the present culture, and the pressures of marriage.

Similar to Maggies social scenario, Esther feels the weight of her superficial femininity. In

tandem with Esthers femininity is the expectation she holds herself to, like Lucys expression of

womanhood. Esther is observant and aware of her identity and her rank both aside from cultural

implications and within them. She reflects:

I was college correspondent for the town Gazette and editor of the literary magazine and
secretary of Honor Board, which deals with academic and social offenses and
punishments--a popular office--and I had a well-known woman poet and professor on the
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faculty championing me for graduate school at the biggest universities in the east, and
promises of full scholarships (Plath 31).

Not only is she aware of her major accomplishments, but boasts about herself as if she were

compensating for an assumption against her real identity. Esthers conceded aside is juxtaposed

against her views of the other women she works with. She describes them as secretaries to

executive and junior executive who hang around in New York waiting to get married to some

career man or other (Plath 4). She claims, girls like that make me sick, but also that shes so

jealous [she] cant speak (4). While she knows shes accomplished, she compares herself to the

women drenched in wealth on the sunroof, yawning and painting their nails and trying to keep

up their Bermuda tans (4). These women seem to be producing the image the magazine is

looking for, an image Esther is slowly becoming more disillusioned by. At this point in the novel,

Esther starts to critique and criticize, Ideologies of domesticity which were deployed to

buttress the claim to equality (Kotef 11). She begins to recognize herself as separate from her

fellow men-focused women. This shift in self-perception allows her to reflect on her lifes

vocational options as a working woman and potential wife or mother.

Esthers critique of gender inequality and oppression become clear through her thoughts

on marriage. She has as very vivid image of the 60s housewife because she writes for the

magazine propagating these images. Observing one of her suitors sleeping the morning after a

party, Esther begins to critique the life she knows she could have with him:

It would mean getting up at seven and cooking him eggs and bacon and toast and coffee
and dawdling about in my nightgown and curlers after hed left for work to wash up the
dirty plates and make the beds, and then when he came home after a lively, fascinating
day hed expect a big dinner, and Id spend the evening washing up even more dirty
plates till I fell into bed, utterly exhausted. (Plath 84)

The haunting accuracy Esther exposes through her narration is informed by her intense toxic

surroundings. Marsha Meskimmon comments on the cultural setting noting:

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By situating individual womens practice within their time, place and culture, a critique
of both their intentions and achievements is provided which offers a contextualized
clarity of understanding. What comes across particularly clearly is the watershed of the
second-wave of feminism, the advent of postmodernism and an articulated cultural
politics. (xv-xvi)

Retrospectively named as second-wave feminism, the roots of Esthers place of hurt creates a

tension in the text: the successful single woman is just as criticized as the married domestic

woman. Esther is trapped within not living in either social stigma. Realizing this she explains,

Thats one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite

security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to

shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket (Plath

83). She sees her individuality as a dynamic image of color and light. The static dull qualities of

her image of a housewife are juxtaposed against her individual desires. In the tension

created, reflected by the mutually exclusive options, Esther assumes she is stuck between

marriage or career success, and maybe not even the latter.

Limitations and powerlessness are both explicated from the idea that Esthers success of

winning scholarships and prizes have a date engraved on it like the date on a tombstone

(Plath 77). She begins to expand and unpack this racing timeline for herself, comparing her life

to a fig tree with different vocational branches:

One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another was a famous poet
and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was EeGee, the amazing editor,
and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was
Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and
offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion (77).

This is one of the only instances in the text where Esther explicitly acknowledges the vast array

of vocational options open to her. As a successful, smart, single, and economically independent

woman, the reader finally sees the colorful fireworks Esther keeps referencing. While these
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options seem liberating, especially for 60s women at large, Esther immediately shoots down

these options and images of herself. Instead of affirming her dreams, she recalls seeing herself:

sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldnt make up
my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but
choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began
to wrinkle and go black, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet. (77)

As an echo to the reaping of time in the tombstone image, Esthers view of opportunity is placed

within a narrow path of limitation and deadline. She utilizes crotch as both a reference to a tree

and her own femininity, suggesting the inherent problems that come with having a crotch. She

cannot escape the falling figs because she cannot climb up from the crotch, or, her natural

feminine role in society. This word also gives weight to the attempted rape of Esther by a man in

a club, a similar situation of male control Maggie experiences with Stephen on the boat. Valid in

her struggles for identity and self-worth, Maggie and Esther are informed by the toxic masculine

assertions of power. Esther is stuck in thinking between two mutually exclusive options. As a

narrator, she is invoking a critique of structured roles within the twentieth century. She knows a

woman is limited to a fate of inequality in the workplace or domestication in the home. The

woman doomed to these limited fates explicated in Victorian rhetoric, in Mary Pooveys words,

depoliticized, moralized, and associated with the domestic sphere, which was being abstracted

at the same time...from the so-called public sphere of competition, self-interest, and economic

aggression (Kotef 11). These women, like Esther, are ostracized into a space entirely created

outside of them, but for them. Esther imagines herself in these marital roles and scorns at the

roles awaiting her. The concept of vocational roles as defining a womans role and identity is

explored further in Agents of Activism through the mapping of Esthers thoughts.

As a woman trapped in her reconvinced gender role, Esther is aware of her oppressed

status and the consequences that come with traditional womanhood. Hager Kotef recognizes the
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concept of the oppressed woman as refugee, in danger of being recaptured, and the mental

institution is a prison. (501). While Esthers critique of feminine roles, like giving birth,

may come from a bitterness against men, her opinions give insight to the recapturing of gender

expectations and pressures already present in her cultural moment. Kotef continues, mental

institutions are full of such women, who are not forced into the institution because of mental

problems but, rather, because of their "independence." Not one word is said regarding forced

treatment or psychiatric intervention (501). Esther is not psychotic, but caught in realizing her

situational oppression as a 60s woman. She feels trapped and powerless, even in the essence of

her female function of reproduction. Expectations for a hyper-feminine performance of a young

women in the twentieth century, like Esther, are reflected in social critiques throughout this

renown literary work.

The Bell Jar dually creates and reflects the problematic social status of a woman. While

Esthers story differs from Maggies, the traditional Victorian values of The Mill are echoed in

The Bell Jar. Esther and Maggie are both doomed to their fate of insanity simply for having an

awareness of the outside world. Maggies death is the type of consequence Esther is running

from: the ultimate deadline of life and the stagnant non-options for women. Horrified by the

options they are both given, they remain frozen in thought under a bell jar: critiqued from the

outside, but trapped by their own emotions within the glass. Clever, smart, and cultured, these

leading women are punished for breaking common social thought. The treatment of these

characters communicates an image of women that transcends changes between centuries. The

nineteenth and twentieth century woman explores similar social problems and are treated as

victims within these social systems.

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The Beautiful Fiend : Lady Audleys Secret

These social systems were explored within the development of sensation fiction, --a

genre composed of Romance and Thriller that occurs in the household and were set in the current

day--through the works of Wilkie Collins and M.E. Braddon. Collins was influential in the

formation of Braddons writing because he wrote not just that of [womens] powerlessness but

also that of their transgression (Heller 2). These novels attracted mass readership because they

dealt with political and social understandings in radical, expanding, and haunting plots featuring

women as deceiving and mysterious. As Tamar Heller, author of Dead Secrets, points out, The

authors of these buried texts are typically either feminineor like the outcastin a powerless

and hence stereotypically feminine position (1). Braddons inspiration came from the carefully

crafted women lurking in the pages of Collins texts. Heller describes these female-driven plots

as Gothic because they not only to tell a story about female victimization, but also to encode a

plot of feminine subversion that resembles a narrative pattern feminist critics have identified in

nineteenth-century womens writing (3). With the rise of a new kind of woman in popular

literature, the stage was set for activist women to speak through characters.

These novels gained mass popularity in part because they spoke to women, but also

because, as Katherine Montwieler reports, The market responded with a huge increase of novels

published in the form of serials. At the same time, the price of these publications dropped to fall

within the budget of working-class readers (46). Middle-class women were granted access to

womens magazines, domestic guides, and fiction that proliferated in the nineteenth century

(46). This pattern of magazines and guides, popular in the nineteenth century, only continued to

gain more popularity, as seen with Ladies Home Journal. With the rise of this mass readership

aimed at women, the plot of Lady Audleys Secret invites activist ideas into the imagination.
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The novel begins with a series of vital characters who contribute to the unraveling of the

mysterious Lady Audley plot. Sir Michael Audley, husband and lover, was fifty-six years of age,

and he had married a second wife three months after his fifty-fifth birthday (Braddon 46). Lady

Audley, or Miss Lucy Graham, governess of a family surgeon, made one of those apparently

advantageous matches which are apt to draw upon a woman the envy and hatred of her sex (46-

47). A pianist, painter, and church-goer, Lady Audley was blessed with that magic power of

fascination, by which a woman can charm with a word or intoxicate with a smile (47). Her

kindness and awareness of her role with the Court was advantageous to the reputation of powers

already established. As the plot continues, Lady Audley is soon revealed as a bigamist: the

woman who attempted the murder of her ex-husband, George Talboys, and took the name Lady

Audley to start a new life for herself once George left her for Australia. The juxtaposition of

these two names, Lucy Graham and Lady Audley, creates a complex two-edged character who is

casted as both dangerous to society and in danger of society.

While en route to discovering Lady Audleys true identity, Robert Audley, friend of

George Talboys, and Lady Audley find themselves alone in her boudoir. In this moment of rising

suspense, the narrator joins the characters and gazes upon the makeup of the mysterious Lucy

Graham. Lady Audley looks very pretty and innocent, seated behind the graceful group of

delicate opal china and glittering silver (Braddon 242). Further still, surely a pretty woman

never looks prettier than when making tea (242). The task of making tea would have been

expected and common within most of the Victorian socio-economic classes, but Lady Audley is

being painted particularly as an aesthetically pleasing subject to the eyes of those gazing upon

her primary duty as a woman. The narrator continues her aside: The most feminine and most

domestic of all occupations imparts a magic harmony to her every movement, a witchery to her
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every glance (242). Lady Audley is first described as a femme fatale, but deeper still into an

object of beauty: The floating mists from the boiling liquid in which she infuses the soothing

herbs; whose secrets are known to her alone, envelope her in a cloud of scented vapor, through

which she seems a social fairy (242-243). Lady Audley is both a witch and a social goddess,

possessing two opposing Victorian norms for domestic women.

Readers are inevitably led to the awful and quite startling realization that this very

woman, who so completely epitomizes ideological and idealized feminine traits, has just very

capably attempted the murder of her first husband (Sowards 10). Her femme fatale persona is

conceived at the mercy of her femininity. Lady Audley attempts to shield her real motives from

her husband, nephew, and readers, alike, that the author raises some of the most provocative

questions about Victorian women and their personal lives (Sowards 10). This crafted projection

of women in the house, displayed by the deceiving and distressed Lady Audley, clearly falls into

the archetype of the Victorian gender portrait. Sowards argues, It is this all too real portrait of

womanhood, one that does not fit into a tidy category that helps readers to better comprehend

Lady Audleys lasting legacy (278). The descriptive moment of the tea making heightens the

tensions of the fallen, yet conniving woman.

Assuming the woman is one with her surroundings, she warns, to do away with the tea-

table is to rob woman of her legitimate empire. To send a couple of hulking men about among

your visitors, disturbing a mixture made in the housekeepers room, is to reduce the most social

and friendly of ceremonies to a formal giving out of rations (Braddon 243). With this warning

implies a distinct social order attached to gender expectations and performance. A womans

empire is among the ornate while the mens empire is outside the house. Furthermore, better the

pretty influence of the tea cups and saucers gracefully wielded in a womans hand than all the
 Win 18

inappropriate power snatched at the point of the pen from the unwilling sterner sex (243). While

the narrator may be pointing to other prose of men at this specific cultural moment, a level of

blind sexism exists behind the distribution of power. While women rightfully have power at the

tea-table, they are limited precisely by this masculine society that female authors like Braddon so

astutely recreate. Aware of this limitation, the narrator widens the scope of gender power

distribution by asking readers to: imagine all the women of England elevated to the high

level of masculine intellectuality, superior to crinolineabove taking the pains to be pretty;

above tea-tables and that cruelly scandalous and rather satirical gossip which even strong men

delight in. (243) This radical call for imagination resides in the assumption that men are

intellectually superior. However, this call is formed from a distinct assumption of the meaning of

strong. The narrator is writing the makeup of two genders within a cultural context that is

cultivating and encouraging observations, influence, and change. Lady Audley, as representation

of Victorian women, is the face of sociopolitical change through her active decisions to support

herself instead let herself fall to the role expectations of nineteenth century England.

This sociopolitical change happens within the text of the novel, particularly in the form of

portraiture. While stuck at Audley Court due to Roberts headache, Alicia guides the two men

into the secret passage into Lady Audleys dressing room where the most valuable paintings

reside. Similar to the language used to describe Lady Audley in person, the painting portrays an

exquisite, yet sinister double identity (Braddon 107). Exaggerated, glimmer of gold, and

delicate fall in line with her role as wife and governess (107). However, strange, sinister, and

wicked add a layer of complexity to the painting, and a layer of controversy to the mystery of

George Talboys (107). This simultaneous function of rhetoric within the narrators thoughts and

the paintings description of Lady Audley continues to highlight the Pre-Raphaelite culture:
 Win 19

It was so like, and yet so unlike. It was as if you had burned

strange-colored fires before my lady's face, and by their influence
brought out new lines and new expressions never seen in it before. The
perfection of feature, the brilliancy of coloring, were there; but I
suppose the painter had copied quaint mediaeval monstrosities until his
brain had grown bewildered, for my lady, in his portrait of her had something of the
aspect of a beautiful fiend. (107)

The narrator describes this painting first with beauty, then descends into darkness while the

painters motivations of the mediaeval image of woman is becoming more clear and deceptive.

This language funnels into the final phrase of beautiful fiend: a phrase capturing the essence of

Lady Audleys predicament and the apparent cultural paradox of a lady. He begins with her hair

and moves down through the mouth, noting the richness of the painting as mimicked from an era

of women objectification through art. The vibrancy and detail-oriented opulence of technique

within this movement suggests a complexity of beauty that is deep and multidimensional, much

like Lady Audley. On Agents of Activism, Dante Gabriel Rossettis Lady Lilith and Sibylla

Palmifera both portray women with similar strange-colored fires and perfection of feature

as Lady Audleys portrait. The site supplements the narrator in using portrait as a canvas for

discovering Lady Audleys larger identity. The Neatline exhibit of Lady Audley in Agents of

Activism mirrors this concept by allowing readers, or viewers, to scroll over the body and read

the texts composing her identity. For example, if you click on Lady Audleys body, the passage

of the beautiful fiend appears. This suggests that the reader is viewing, or even partaking in,

the labelling of Lady Audleys body. Through this representation, Lady Audley can be imagined

as more complex and more outspoken: an activist of literature. Through the site her lack of

agency in her identity is exposed. Within these texts there is an underlying depth to the religious

moral codes being broken and done away with in the seductive abstraction of the domestic

woman.
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Lady Audleys depth and complexion is crafted by culture into deception and betrayal.

While most of the characters shame her into a one-dimensional woman, the doctor is the first

man to justly place her in society. He clarifies that she committed the crime of bigamy, because

by that crime she obtained fortune and position (Braddon 383). Robert Audley, seeing the most

just solution to her societal trap, attempts to convince the doctor of her madness, so that she may

be treated as justly as she can whilst in the paradox of crime and oppression. However, the doctor

brings justice to her prescribed identity stating, There is no madness there. When she found

herself in a desperate position, she did not grow desperate. She employed intelligent means, and

she carried out a conspiracy which required coolness and deliberation in its execution. There is

no madness in that (383). This voice of justice creates a radical dimension against labeled

oppression, giving him a powerful agency in the fate of women. King reinforces, in a society

where science is taking the place once occupied by religion, the role of the priest is reinforced, if

not replaced, by that of the doctor. As Tambling points out, physicians and lawyers are described

in Mary Braddons novel, Lady Audleys Secret, as the confessors of this prosaic nineteenth

century. (74) Lady Audleys expression of femininity is tea-wife gone mad, but the doctor

unpacks the title of mad, a typical prescription to radical women, as a label for the suffering of

poverty she experienced from her husband leaving her, and then commends, not her madness, but

her clever thinking, as the most rational solution in her situation. Lady Audley stands at the

circular crux of justice and oppression, trapped by the consequence of her self-saving decisions

and exiled without alternative endings. Historically, Lady Audleys crime would have been

considered bigamy and forgery, most likely yielding intense punishment or death. Knowing this,

Robert tries to save her by placing her in a French asylum. Even though this consequence is
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better than the death by trial awaiting her, this plot predicament leaves her trapped within a circle

of oppression. Lady Audley is both a victim of her beauty and her crime.

The Total Effect: The Edible Woman

The discussion of female equality and vocations becomes increasingly more important as

feminist literature began to develop throughout the decades. Margaret Atwood's major

contribution to the Second-Wave feminist movement was her novel The Edible Woman. The

Canadian newsmagazine Macleans described Atwood as Canadas most gossiped-about

writer most likely because she was a powerful communicator of Canadian culture as well as

human rights issues on a global scale by using the publicity machine and the media business

with superiority, dignity, and generosity (Becker 29). She gained mass readership through

provocative metaphors and her wry humor as an outspoken protagonist of the emerging

Canadian literary scene in the late sixties (Becker 30).

Atwood, as an activist and protagonist herself, crafted the story of Marian McAlpin, a

young, newly engaged working woman in 1960 who struggles with an eating disorder that

becomes increasingly worse with the timeline of her marriage. As the wedding gets closer, she

finds she physically cannot consume food, while in the meantime, becomes acquainted with

postgraduate literature students and learning about her own femininity. This plot lends itself to

associate disorder with a disordered society, much like the illness and consequence Esther

experiences in The Bell Jar. The two women want to love men, be independent, and attain a

sustainable career, but the men or associated obstacles in their lives keep them from acquiring all

three. The larger archetype of Marian is composed as a domestic prop of a wife, which she acts

out against by baking a cake to represent the perfect wife her fiance demands. Her worries,

concerns, and frustrations are displayed in a very tangible image of who she will never be.
 Win 22

Joe, Marians friend, mentions his worry for his wife Clara commenting, I think its

harder for any woman whos been to university. She gets the idea she has a mind, her professors

pay attention to what she has to say, they treat her like a thinking human being; when she gets

married, her core gets invaded (Atwood 259). Joes voice adheres to the general conception

of women in 1960: the idea that thinking women are dangerous and more contained in a

marriage. This explicit statement of bias solidifies the major social and political problems present

within the themes of the text. When Marian questions her vocational equality Joe clarifies, her

feminine role and her core are really in opposition, her feminine role demands passivity from

her (259). Explicating Joes statement Marian replies, So she allows her core to get taken over

by her husband. And when the kids come, she wakes up one morning and discovers she doesnt

have anything left inside, shes hollow, she doesnt know who she is any more; her core has been

destroyed (260). Much like Lady Audleys stagnant place in society because of her status,

Marian feels she is left without any control or agency within her relationships. The identity of a

woman solely relies on her husband, since she is left hollow, and Joe gives the impression to

Marian that husbands are aware of this.

Marian discovers this problem of expected femininity during a party she and Peter host as

an engaged couple. Ainsely, her roommate, offers to perform the procedure of hair, nails, and

makeup to match the vibrant sparkly red dress she bought for the party (Atwood 244). Marian

feels extremely uncomfortable in the costume, commenting that she should have never worn

red because it made her a perfect target (269). Peter calls her absolutely marvelous, as if

she could arrange to look like that all the time (251). Peter falls in love with Marian as the

beautiful wife for his home, while she couldnt grasp the total effect of the dress, nails, and

hair (251). She looks in the mirror and asks herself, What was it that lay beneath the surface
 Win 23

these pieces were floating on, holding them all together? (251). She finds her identity hollow

underneath the costume of fianc. Peter loves her, especially in that red dress, and goes as far

as to chase her with a camera to capture her new look (253). As he goes to take the photograph,

she couldnt move, she couldnt even move the muscles of her face as she stood and stared into

the round glass lens pointing toward her (254). She does not feel sexy or attractive, but attacked

for her sexual appeal. Before he snaps the shot, guests arrive and Marian asks herself, Whats

the matter with me?...Its only a camera (255). Before she escapes the party the narrator names

this fear thinking, once he pulled the trigger she would be stopped, fixed indissolubly in that

gesture, that single stance, unable to move or change (269). Her discomfort in her super-

feminine appearance aligns with her inability to eat. She cannot nourish herself if she has no

core. Deductively, she cannot have a core if she gets married. In the first realization of this

feminine trap, the reader can see the metaphor representing a Patriarchal culture has therefore

constructed a role for the male artist and a visual mode for representing that role which in turn

have been accepted by cultural descriptive practices as the standard normative representation

(Showalter 23). Marian sees the act of getting married as an action of handing over the agency to

the patriarchal man.

Aware that she had been ringed and that he took pride in displaying her, she quickly

realizes that she has lost her own feminine identity to the exclusive agency of her fiance

(Atwood 191). In a fit of empowerment, she rushes to the grocery store to buy cake ingredients

to bake before Peter comes to speak with her. The narrator reports:

Now she had a blank white bodyFirst, she gave it a bikini, but that was too sparse. She
filled in the midriff...She kept extending, adding to top and bottom, until she had a dress
of sorts. In a burst of exuberance, she added a row of ruffles around the neckline, and
more ruffles at the hem of the dress. She made a smiling lush lipped pink mouth and pink
shoes to match (296).
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Marian creates Peters ideal picture-perfect wife of the mid-twentieth century. With the

remainder of the decorations, she [makes] a floral design for the pink dress, and [sticks] a few

in her hair, remarking, Now the woman look[s] like an elegant antique china figurine (296).

Once finished with baking the image of the ultra-feminine woman, Marian remarks further, You

look deliciousVery appetizing. And thats what you get for being food...She felt a certain pity

for her creature but she was powerless now to do anything about it (298). This cake-woman

explicitly represents the woman trapped into and by heteronormative marriage. Marian finds a

sense of self in creating exactly the monster society wants her to be, straight down to the

characteristics of sugary hollowness and powerlessness. Once Peter arrives, she presents herself

to him exclaiming, But Ive made you a substitute, something youll like much better. This is

what you really wanted all along, isnt it? Ill get you a fork (299). He rejects both women in

front of him and Marian and Duncan consume her super-femininity to a point of non-existence.

Her intimate experience of sexual objectification ... is definitive of and synonymous with

women's lives as gender female (Nussbaum 250). She manifests her own objectification into an

artform in which she "can grasp self (250).

The cake stands as a symbol of Marians struggle with gender roles and marriage, while

the narration dually supplements Marians emotions and actions. After she is engaged to Peter,

the narration changed from first person to third person, creating a distance between the reader,

the narrator, and Marian. Once Marian presents the cake to Peter and he rejects it, the narration

changes back to first person to allow a close relationship between the narrator, the reader, and

Marian once again. This subtle structure of the novel replicates the emotional needs of Marian

throughout the novel while simultaneously controlling how close the reader gets to experience

the body of text the narrator and Marian both disclose.

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The Agents of Activism Omeka site demonstrates this objectification by engaging the

reader in exploring the body as text. This function allows readers to experience the body of text

in an intimate way, but through the text written in third-person. This specific page of the site

allows readers to experience this narration in a provocative, yet, appropriately pertinent fashion.

For example, if you click on Marians head, Joes comment about any woman whos been to

university appears (Atwood 259). This places a visible label on Marians head, controlled by the

user so that the user experiences Marians rigid trap in her identity. To accompany this Neatline

exhibit, I conducted my own edible woman project by baking a decorating a cake. As seen on

the site, I collected similar baking goods and decorations and used excerpts from the book as

instructions for decorating. More information on this can be found in the site.

The cake, like Lady Audleys portrait, displays the cultural gender role of women from

the 1860s and 1960s on a silver platter. However, the metaphor within the cake consumption is

centered in the notion of shallow women as acceptable, while the portrait exposes a woman as

being radically dangerous. The cake allows Marian to speak to her femininity, to interact with the

woman she was supposed to be for her fianc. While Peter will not consume her false identity,

Duncan haphazardly consumes her brain, which is representative of the theories, concepts, and

ideas he implements in her search for freedom. Marian is objectified with both men: one is using

her for rank, status and class, while the other is using her for self-identification and manipulation.

Conclusion

The context of the four case studies inform the significance of the female archetypes, but

also highlight the theories that formed in and from the texts. Maggies nonconformance in The

Mill on the Floss is a First-Wave archetype rising out of the Victorian Era. This is emphasized
 Win 26

further in the comparisons to her cousin and finally, her tragic fate. Similarly, Esthers fear is the

physical death of her mental and physical health and the death marriage brings. Her role as

protagonist is equally passive in that she feels the weight of limited vocational options as a

woman in the workplace. Contrarily, Lady Audley acts upon her unjust situation, giving rise to

developing issues within the concept of femme fatale throughout the novel. Her double

identity is exposed as beautiful, necessary, and disturbing through text and painting. Marians

radical femininity is expressed through her concerning thoughts, rash behaviors, and finally,

baked into a picture-perfect cake. Unlike the other protagonists, her fate is left untouched and

quite hopeful considering her recent awakening and breakup.

These four texts, while different in plot, setting, and narration, come together to present

women of worth, identity, and individuality. The 60s woman, across centuries, begins to speak

and act through the bodies and mouths of the domestically-doomed heroines. While they are

trapped in the comparable projections of their own cultures, they are rising and speaking in unity.

Close readings of these four texts allow for a richer analysis of the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries within the cultural moments a reader would have experienced. While the 1860s and

1960s are only small comparisons in the timeline of rising feminism, it allows for a deeper and

more holistic argument using examples. It is my hope that my Omeka site expands these

universal concepts over decades and exemplary archetypes.

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Primary Texts

Atwood, Margaret. The Edible Woman. 1969. New York: Anchor Books, 1998.

Braddon, Mary Elizabeth. Lady Audleys Secret. Ed. Natalie M. Houston. 1862. Peterborough:

Broadview literary texts, Critical ed., 2003.

Eliot, George. The Mill on the Floss. Ed. Juliette Atkinson. 1860.Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2015.

Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar.1963. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005

Secondary Sources

Armitt, Lucie. George Eliot: Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch. New York:

Columbia University Press, 2000.

Becker, Susanne. Celebrity, or a Disneyland of the Soul: Margaret Atwood and the Media.

Margaret Atwood: Works and Impact. Ed. Reingard M. Nischik, 2000. 28-40.

Correa, Delia da Sousa. George Eliot, Music, and Victorian Culture. Houndmills: Palgrave

Macmillan, 2003.

Evans, Judith. Feminist Theory Today: An Introduction to Second-Wave Feminism. London:

SAGE Publications, 1995.

Flint, Kate. The Woman Reader. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.

Heilmann, Ann. New Woman Fiction: Women Writing First-Wave Feminism. New York: St.

Martins Press, LLC, 2000.

Heller, Tamar. Dead Secrets: Wilkie Collins and the Female Gothic. New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1992.

Kanwit, John Paul M. Art Criticism and the Woman Writer. Ohio State UP, 2013.
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King, Jeanette. The Victorian Woman Question in Contemporary Fiction. New York: Palgrave

Macmillan, 2005.

Kotef, Hagar. On Abstractness: First Wave Liberal Feminism and the Construction of

the Abstract Woman. Feminist Studies, vol. 35, no. 3 (Oct. 2009): 495-522.

Lanser, Susan Sniader. Fictions of Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice. Ithaca:

Cornell University Press, 1992.

Looser, Devoney. The Cambridge Companion to Womens Writing in the Romantic Period.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Meskimmon, Marsha. The Art of Reflection: Womens Self-portraiture in the Twentieth Century.

New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.

Montwieler, Katherine. Marketing Sensation: Lady Audleys and Consumer Culture. Beyond

Sensation: Mary Elizabeth Braddon in Context. Eds Marlene Tromp, Pamela K. Gilbert,

and Aeron Haynie, 2000, pp. 43-62.

National Womens History Museum. Women with a Deadline: Female Printers, Publishers, and

Journalists from the Colonial Period to World War I. 2007, nwhm.org/online-

exhibits/womenwithdeadlines/wwd24.htm. Accessed 19 Apr. 2017.

Nussbaum, Martha C. Objectification. Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 24, no. 2 (Oct. 1995):

pp. 249-291.

Showalter, Elaine. Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Sicle. New York: Viking

Penguin, 1990.

Sowards, Heather M. Mad, Bad, and Well Read: An Examination of Women Readers

and Education in the Novels of Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Dissertation. Ohio University.

Athens: Dissertation Abstracts International, 2016. (Publication No. [DA10001902])

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McGann, Jerome and Lisa Samuels. Deformance and Interpretation. U of Virginia,

www2.iath.virginia.edu/jjm2f/old/deform.html. Accessed 18 Apr. 2017.