Discuss the 'Fallen Woman' as a Familiar Feature of Victorian Writing.

For the modern reader this is indicative of authors conforming to male conventions, Eliot 'excusing' Arthur for his unethical behaviour, adhering to the double standard morality. If women are placed in the 'correct' environment, the home for Ruskin, they can be protected and remain pure. Tess and Ruth are forced outside the home environment, the former by the death of a horse, the latter by Mrs Mason, so are vulnerable and unprotected from male pollutants.

Hardy shows an erotic fascination with Tess; she is his creation, her sexuality defined by him. Gilbert and Gubar argue that the male author in 'fathering' his text uses his pen as a metaphorical penis (Gilbert & Gubar 1979: 3) the connotations of pen also suggesting an imprisoning of Tess in the text. Unlike Eliot, Hardy does not allow Tess's thoughts to roam; she and her feelings are viewed in the eyes of others. Hardy's language suggests he desires Tess as much as the male protagonists. His representation of Tess is doubly voyeuristic as the reader is invited to watch Angel gazing at her, Hardy's use of meronyms placing Tess in both a passionate and a passive role: 'he saw the red interior of her mouth ... she had stretched one arm so high ... he could see its satin delicacy ... her eyelids hung heavy over their pupils' (Tess 148). Meronyms are also used in Chapter 14 where Hardy portrays a cinematic view of Tess, arguably for the male audience, Tess the object of sexual desire. From 'this morning the eye returns...' Hardy seems to build up tension, subjecting Tess to a 'controlling and curious gaze', Freud naming this action scopophilia (Mulvey 1998: 557). Hardy could be viewed as promoting the interests of men, exploiting Tess for 'homosocial desire'(Sedgwick 1998), collectively dominating her. Even though Tess never courts attention she 'seduces' it; her name is the climactic event: 'It is Tess Durbeyfield'. This domination is supported by Alec's treatment of her. The reader is led to believe that Tess is a victim but is also shown her passion so is aware of female sexuality.

Ruth is by far the most innocent with no mother to guide her and neglected by Mason. If Tess is to be credited with knowledge of sexual matters, Ruth is not. Her attraction to Bellingham is an unconscious one; she watches him dancing with interest but she has no idea of the association of the camellia received from him. She believes its beauty causes her to tend it carefully not the fact that Bellingham has given it to her. She is given alluring qualities as she winds in and out between luxuriant, overgrown shrubs, 'careless of watching eyes' but her innocence is never far away as she is 'unconscious of their existence'. Ruth is a naive heroine who does not recognise her own sexual desire, an orphan who equates with Wordsworth's Lucy, a feeling, loving heroine, knowing she is pretty only because people have told her so. She has a natural impulse to taste the glory of the outside world, having been an inmate at Mason's establishment for five months. Bellingham, struck by Ruth's innocence, wishes to 'tame' her in the way he 'tamed the timid fawns in his mother's park'(Ruth 31). Ruth possesses no knowledge of sexual matters and Tess, rather than being conscious of sex, shares this ignorance: 'How could I be expected to know ... there was danger in menfolk? Why didn't you warn me? (Tess 72). For the Victorians, sexual desire was a dangerous symptom of original sin and girls were protected from it by 'a conspiracy of silence' (Stoneman 1987: 103), all three female characters victims of absent or negligent maternal figures and ignorant of their own sexual nature, their sexuality repressed by society's laws.

Edward Tilt sympathised with woman's conflict between passion and duty, viewing female desire as 'analogous to male' (Matus 1995: 44), stating music and mental inactivity pampered those desires. William Acton, however, insisted on a difference between male and female desire. In Functions and Disorders he compares female sexuality to the animal world, citing the wincing pain of a female cat to suggest 'female distaste throughout nature for the sexual act' (Matus 1995: 45). If Acton's view is followed Tess is violated only if she displays no sexual desire; she can remain a pure woman, faithfully presented. Alternatively, if Tilt's view is followed, Hardy liberates female sexuality, showing Tess as a willing participant in her first sexual encounter. To the Victorian mind, a virtuous woman might submit reluctantly to her husband's sexual advances, only the 'fallen' woman finding actual pleasure in sex. Tess is deposited in an ambiguous position by Hardy's language. Like Hetty, she could be a willing participant, wearing a thin muslin dress on a chilly night, her falling into reverie on a pile of leaves a precursor to her 'fall' with Alec. Lying on her back in sylvan surroundings she could be waiting for sexual fulfilment as suggested by Arthur Hacker's wood nymphs in his painting Leaf Drift. Tess, as a person, is invisible, so the sexual act itself is ambiguous, Hardy unsure how to label Tess. As Laura Claridge states:

It is as if the possibility that Tess is raped protects her from the position of having engaged in 'liberated' sex, as if the idea of free choice might sully her important purity (Claridge 1993)

The reader is aware, albeit implicitly, of Tess' 'fall', but for Hetty and Ruth, their conceptions appear to be 'immaculate'; Ruth's child Leonard described as 'a mysterious holy child'. As they 'fall' unknowingly the female authors appear to evade the problem of female desire, Gaskell instead focusing on placing Ruth in a situation of respectability. Eliot's treatment of Hetty after the 'act', however, seems to deny her that attribute. Hetty is a social outcast, alienated, frantically trying to locate Arthur in the false hope that she can secure marriage, wandering in despair, contemplating suicide, her life 'as full of dread as death'. The authorial tone of the narrator is quite emphatic: Hetty is to be blamed for her foolish sin and the reader is to be encouraged not to emulate her. Hardy seems to offer Tess the highest degree of female sexuality, allowing her to take control of her emotions but, although she forgives Angel his indiscretion he cannot forgive her in return, Hardy highlighting the double standard of Victorian morality. Earlier in the plot Tess, the sexual predator, creeps towards Angel 'stealthily as a cat ... cracking snails'. Returning to Tilt's view the music of Angel's harp could be seen to excite her desires. She closes in on Angel but ensures her presence is hidden from him, the 'gaze' now subverted. Alternatively Hardy could be erotically gratifying his male reader, the 'juicy grass' sending up 'mists of pollen at a touch', while the transitivity keeps Tess in a subordinate role. She is languid, part of a heady summer evening; her eyes had been dazed by Alec, now her ears are dazed by the harmony and the atmosphere. Yet Hardy seems unable to allow Tess to survive; along with Eliot and Gaskell he ends his creation's life.

Ruth's innocence and Tess' ambiguity free them from 'cheapening paradise', but Hetty has 'made a brute' of Arthur, and this representation of femininity conforms to the conventions of the day, Eliot satisfying the reading public and the ideological stance. The female protagonists symbolise victimisation by male exploitation, their authors highlighting the injustice of double standard morality. If authors have authority over their work one could expect them to write freely about controversial subjects. Eliot, using a male pseudonym and Gaskell refusing to have her novel in her house, suggest their authority was limited. It would seem likely that Eliot, due to her unorthodox liaison with Lewes, would exhibit unconventionality, but Hetty is placed in the conventional role of 'fallen' woman. It could be argued that Tess' Ruth's and Hetty's desires are repressed, the authors sacrificing the inner feelings of woman to satisfy an ideological moral law. Female passion has been revealed but then concealed by the evasion of the actual sexual act and the consequent deaths of the heroines, suggesting Hardy, Gaskell and Eliot are denying female sexuality. Historically, Ruth inspired Josephine Butler to campaign against the Contagious Diseases Act, in an attempt to protect the female body (Barreca 1990) and socially Hardy, Eliot and Gaskell have highlighted the need for change. Like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, its beauty for all to see, Tess, Ruth and Hetty are allowed to 'free' their sexuality, but they are only allotted the three days' existence of the butterfly. It could be argued, under the metaphorical penis of patriarchy, the authors have silenced Woman, have left her screaming within.

To conclude, the Victorian woman can no longer be framed; the boundaries have been blurred. The 'pure' woman has deviated from the conventional norm; she can no longer be defined. It could be believed, however, the inner conscious of Woman has been revealed, rather like Munch's The Scream which displays, unmistakably, male figures in the background and a depersonalised, sexless, tormented figure in the foreground. This figure, I suggest, is both Woman and the authors, afraid of the power of female sexuality. This could suggest why each 'fallen' woman has to leave an 'angel' behind, in the forms of Jemima, Dinah and Liza-Lu. On a positive point, the authors have planted the seed for Women's Rights Movements, such as the Suffragettes, to follow, and, for the Victorian female reader, the encouragement to fight for liberation and an end to male dominated society.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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