Too much context

psychology in CD

-Fruedian ideas of the subconscious- the unconscious mind and the idea of the external vs the internal, mind body separation- link to Rezia

>Wolf’s husband’s company published him, likely aware

-In 1916 carl jung introduced the theory that we all share a collective unconscious: that a species have certain shared subconscious instincts

Rest Cure

-1872 Mitch developed rest cure to treat soldiers with battle fatigue, used theoretically for men and women (mostly women bat fatigue on home front)

-S Weir Mitchell’s rest cure commonly used for women with severe nervous symptoms

> hypochondriacs, hysteric, neurasthenics > many worsened

>(considered too intrusive and sadistic))

PHYSICAL ASPECT: rest seclusion excessive feeding

-Doctors promised patients a ‘pos cure’ if she gave control to physician + “concerned herself with nothing but following directions” (Byford)

Eg spoon fed+sponge bathed+rectal enemas/vaginal douche by nurse, brief reading to by nurse after 2 weeks for a few hours a day, did passive exercise to offset ill effects (muscular atrophy), exclusive diet of milk (4ounces per 2 hours) Mitch thought surplus of fat would help fight moral/mental strains+fevers+improve blood quality (being thin also interfered with having children, ideal vict woman obese)

 “I arrange to have the bowels and water passed lying down” Mitch

PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT: moral reeducation

-Moral reed aimed to “make clear to her how she is to regain and preserve dom over her emotions” STOICISM

>(women too emot expressive>weakened physical endurance) patients promised to fight “every desire to cry, or twitch or grow excited”

>(if disorders from self sacrificing maternal role must suppress those instincts)+ mustn’t share emotions (bored listener and worsened matters, criticises self absorption and emotional excess)

-nervous women=slefish+tyrannical must abdicate control “vampires sucking the blood of the healthy people of a household”

>control of fem body transferred to male doctor

-Believed women’s behaviour should conform more with masc values, rational ordered

>women should be more like men live domestic life according to male rules (focused on moral imperatives)>less hysterical

MEDICAL RATIONALE

-To remain healthy one must achieve harmony with environ + bodily organs (disruption>strain>decrease resistance+nutrition) rest diet exercise for preserving “golden mean”, disease prevented by avoiding excess+indulgence

-Believed women inferior>nervous systems more irritable>more susceptible to disease, believed reproductive physiology (menstruation, menopause, lactation, etc) caused nervous disorders+inferior organs as reproductive ones dom

>believed in finite energy, avoid diversions from children eg work)

>DEVELOP ILLNESS DUE TO UNFEM STRIVINGS

“There are in the physiological life of women disqualifications for continuous labour of the mind”

SYMPTOMS+SYMBOLISM

-Vict women regressed phys+emot, taught complete sub in isolation, instructed how to think and feel

-The Yellow Wallpaper shows protagonist madding due to RC

Many didn’t benefit instead escaping trad roles of sub and growing personally

Politics in CD

Book has a large focus on transitions in life, Britain was going through a political and social transition

·       Just after WW1 – England’s power begins to crumple – whilst there were victories in the war, thousands of soldiers had also died – the country had also suffered huge financial loss - people began to question morality.

·       Women over 30 only gained the right to vote who met property requirements in 1918

o   Not until 1928 that all women could finally vote

·       ‘Matrimonial causes act’ 1923 where adultery became the sole grounds for divorce

·       Homosexuality in uk still criminal offense until ‘sexual offenses act’ 1967 (no similar legislation targetting women

1921- lawmakers voted to criminalise “sexual acts of gross indecency” between women but this was never passed

Woolf and the rest cure

-Woolf “Really a doctor is worse than a husband”

>believed Victorian husbands to be too authoritarian

>(her father had made her family miserable but post his death doctors took control of her)

>Leonad coddled her, though not being the trad husband

-Dr Savage 1904 said the illness was physical (inherited by father)+worsened by intellectual activity

>vulnerable girl+education=insane

>prescribed conventional treatment for MC isolation in country (‘a polite madhouse) gave soporifics +electrical stimulation

>Woolf referred to it in letters as ‘tyrannical’ and ‘shortsighted’

-Savage encouraged children> decrease intellectual activity+balanced life but others recommended against it

-Bradshaw is arguably inspired by Savage

>he recognises the severity but the treatment is satirised eg insists childless

-In the books finale Woolf rejects outmoded medical ideas (Clarissa embraces life) (she too heard birds singing in Greek and attempted to kill herself by jumping out a window) (CD’s walk would feel especially liberating to her)

“I reject being kept with my head on a platter like some giant sow” Woolf, feels dehumanised

Science and Mathematics in CD

-The age of invention: recent inventions included the motorcar and the telephone
-In 1915 Einstein published his theory of relativity which introduce people to the existence of black holes in space where space and time are reduced to nothingness similar similar image that is depicted in Mrs Dalloway

Time in CD

(Woolf knows that the next pm will be labour- adds to sense of nostalgia and living in the past- it is the end of an empire- Septimus’ extreme illness reflected the state of society)

-Struggled organising flow of perceptions

>(didn't want to disturb allusion of the stream with chapter titles)

>(considered a Greek chorus, diving book into acts, she decided to mark the transition with a double space (of which there are twelve)
>Big Ben striking punctuates the passing time

-Central motif is the analogy between hours of the day and female life cycle (biological clock)

>(CD placed in the middle and surrounded by women 18-80)

-CD has internalised medical attitude that her change in life (menopause, loss of youthful beauty, lacking independent social role and job) is a hopeless decline

Mental illness in CD

-Sept's day is juxtaposed with CD's (paranoid suspicions and distorted perceptions v her omentalnorder)
>(he was initially planned to be a terrorist planning for get revenge for the war by killing the PM> emotionally numbed by war, grieving, angry at society, guilty about wife)

>his extreme illness is reflective of the state of society (self control is worshipped, feelings suppressed, emotional after effects of war evaded)

-Woolf draws on her own experience of madness to present his delusions and condemn the doctors who misunderstand his terror

-The war seems to have left governing classes untouched (continue in their routines, Sept escapes through suicide)

-A time in which there was very little understanding of mental health, treatment often like the “rest cure”, which Woolf criticises through Septimus

>could be alluding the  short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman also a famous criticisim of the rest cure >Biographical – Woolf herself prescribed the rest cure at various points in her life

 

 

 

 

CD’s ending

-The party (where CD affirms her life choices) (paired with Sept deaths) is intended to reflect "life in every variety and funk of anticipation; while S. dies"

>(mixture of snobs and lost souls who are all shown to have hidden and troubled feelings despite the facades, a bravery which CD appreciates)
>CD's transition in understanding post Sept death mirrors societies' transformation
>Book has a large focus on transitions in life, Britain was going through a political and social transition

economy, industry and employment in CD

-Age of mass production including the mass production of motorcars
-By the mid 1920s the immediate post-war economic boom had declined an interest rates were high.
-Unemployment rose to 2,000,000
-The advertising industry began to boom with companies such as pears soap leading the way

in 1918 the representation of the people act was passed...

-Allowed women over the age of 30 who met a property qualification to vote.
-Although 8.5 million women met this criteria, it was only about 2/3 of the total population of women in the UK

The married women's property act 1882

-Through marriage women had practically no rights, everything they previously owned became their husbands and everything they owned within their marriage was not theirs but under their husbands possession for example food clothes and children.
-The married women's property act is referred to in Virginia Woolf's essay a room of one's own

The great war of 1914 to 1918 add to

Affects war had on gender positions and roles as well as mental health affects

Virginia Woolf's mental health issues

-She suffered with depression anorexia and multiple eating disorders.
-From the age of 13, following the death of her mother, Woolf suffered periodic mood swings from severe depression to manic excitement, including psychotic episodes, which the family referred to as her "madness". After the death of her father in 1904, she threw herself out of a window and was briefly institutionalised.
-She will have experienced the ignorant attitudes towards mental health at the time and this is reflected in Mrs Dalloway through Septimus and her social criticism of Dr Holmes and Dr Bradshaw

-She claimed to hear birds singing in Greek, King Edward using obscene language, and voices commanding her to kill herself, which, at one point, she attempted by throwing herself from a window.

>CD deciding to live despite having such symptoms is a clear rebeliance

Angel in the House (1854)

-Poem inspired by Patmore's feelings about his own wife.
-'Man must be pleased' (opening phrase- all that matters in their relationship), 'To please is woman's pleasure' (a woman's sole purpose, no consideration/understanding of the woman's feelings), 'Another, not for her but for him' (only he is gaining, she feels nothing), 'Expecting his remorse' (doesn't care about or value her feelings), 'She leans and weeps against his breast' (he's supporting her, she's over-emotional. His strength and her weakness) Clearly devoted', 'She loves with love that cannot tire'.Women/wives are supposed to be submissive, loving, caring, their sole purpose is to look after and pleasure their husbands.
-Virginia Woolf (1931)- 'Killing the angel in the house was part of the occupation of the women writer.' 'Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own.'

Florence Nightingale, essay 'Cassandra' (1852)

'The family? It is too narrow a field for the development of an immortal spirit, be that spirit male or female.'
'Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity - these three - and a place in society where no one of the three can be exercised?'
'Passion, intellect moral activity - these three have never been satisfied in a woman. In this cold and oppressive conventional atmosphere, they cannot be satisfied. To say more on this subject would be to enter into the whole history of society, of the present state of civilisation. Look at the poor lives we lead.'
'The true marriage - that noble union, by which a man and woman become together the one perfect being - probably does not exist at present upon earth.'

A Room of One's Own: Shakespeare's Sister, women writers, writing about women, and by women

-Imagines a sister for Shakespeare, just as creative as her brother.
-Her exclusion from education and from the theatrical profession leads her to her suicide.

Lucrezia's inspiration

-Woolf based her loosely on the ballet dancer Lidia Lopokova who was married to economist John Maynard Keynes (like Septimus, secretly gay).
-Woolf tried to get the character of a vibrant foreigner treated badly by the English social scene (including Woolf's own social circle).

Woolf's thoughts on religion

-Woolf wasn't religious. She had disdain for organised religion.
-Shown through her writing of Miss Kilman (highly religious character, Clarissa's dislike for her)

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (1811)

Elinor Dashwood is the sensible and reserved daughter of the novel, who feels a keen sense of responsibility to her family and friends, places their welfare and interests above her own and suppresses her own strong emotions in a way that leads others to think she is indifferent or cold-hearted.
Marianne Dashwood is the romantically inclined and eagerly expressive second daughter of the novel, who embraces spontaneity, excessive sensibility, love of nature, and romantic idealism, and has to learn that her behaviour has been selfish.
John Willoughby is an attractive but deceitful young man who wins Marianne Dashwood's heart but then abandons her (greedily) in favour of the wealthy Miss Sophia Grey.

Coverture

A legal doctrine in the English common law in which a married woman's legal existence was considered to be merged with that of her husband, so that she had no independent legal existence of her own. Upon marriage, coverture provided that a woman became a feme covert, whose legal rights and obligations were mostly subsumed by those of her husband. An unmarried woman, or feme sole, had the right to own property and make contracts in her own name (Clarissa is a feme covert).

Womens Status & Place:
Adam Smith -

Recommends "the virtues of self-denial, of self government"

Womens Status & Place:
John Gregory, A Fathers Legacy to his Daughters -

"men have a larger share of reason bestowed on them"
" modest reserve, retiring delicacy"

Womens Status & Place:
Elizabeth Montagu

"wit in a woman is likely to have bad consequences"

A Vindication of the Rights of Women 1792
Mary Wollstonecraft -

- objects that the highest reward for female virtue is male attention
- advocates education for women

Enlightenment/ NeoClassicism

- rationality, insight, judgment, moderation, and balance
- idea that reason is the primary source of authority and legitimacy
- advocated for liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state

Romanticism + Marianne

- Focus on human emotion
- Artistic and intellectual movement
- Imagination over reason
- Excess
- Dedication to the beauty of nature
- Emphasis on the importance of the individual; a conviction that people should follow ideals rather than imposed conventions and rules

-This unchecked enthusiasm for the “cult of sensibility” results in Marianne revelling in the advantages of her physical attractiveness, and linking her own beauty and youth to feminine concepts vulnerability and self-sacrifice. 

>She recreates, in her own “real” life, the generic plot line of many of the romantic novels Austen gently mocks.  

-Marianne sets up and interprets the action of her life as a drama, in which the beautiful, passionate but vulnerable young woman needs to be “rescued” by Willoughby - a beautiful, dashing male hero on a horse.  

-When this intense connection is lost, Marianne sacrifices herself for love, in the style of the suicidal romantic hero, Werther. 

-Her preference for wild weather and exhausting solitary walks over challenging, wet terrain leads directly to her injuring her ankle, and later, catching a serious infection. 

Progression

-Marianne’s journey involves a complete reassessment of her values, before she is able to ‘see’ Willoughby and Brandon correctly, initially considers Brandon - a man of thirty-five, of rather dull and dreary appearance to boot - to be ‘an old bachelor’, wholly unsuitable for marriage

>her positive appraisal of Willoughby is based on a rather superficial, naive appreciation of his aesthetic attractiveness, youth and charisma.  

>women in the late 18^th century Romantic novels that Marianne enjoys reading teaches her to view youth/age in women through Bergers proscriptive male lens: ‘“A woman of seven-and-twenty,”, said Marianne “[…] can never hope to feel or inspire affection again”’ (‘S&S’, p.28).  

>BUT Pam Morris lies underneath Marianne’s preference for Willoughby is a narcissistic assumption that a young man's propensity to agree with all her opinions, and imitate her own tastes is what makes him most attractive and marriageable.  Morris refers to this as ‘narcissistic subjectivism that [seeks] to impose self and its systems upon the world’.  

>The young are more susceptible to this form of narcissism than the more mature characters - core values which make him truly ‘marriageable’ - should be kindness, integrity and loyalty.  

-Austen makes Brandon’s inner worth central to the plot’s scheme of rewards and punishments.

>There is room within a good marriage for superficial differences of taste and outlook - as we find between Marianne and Brandon - but core values such as kindness and integrity must be shared.  Marianne’s rite of passage requires her to accept that ‘her passionate opinions and principles have been tested by experience and observation and proved false.’  In rejecting her ‘narcissistic subjectivism’, she learns to acknowledge ‘the empirical reality that constitutes a shared world’ [Morris].

-Revelations of Brandon’s colourful past reveal that, in his youth, Brandon in fact manifested many of the qualities of an attractive romantic hero, which Marianne so deeply admires in the romantic fiction she reads, and so foolishly projects onto Willoughby.  Even as a more mature adult, he defends the young Eliza’s honour by inviting Willoughby to a duel - the stuff of romantic adventure stories.  

Spinsters

Women, like Austen herself, who passed beyond their youth without marrying became spinsters. They had no formal role in society and were occasionally a burden to their families.

fate of educated young women of good standing whose fortunes were thrown in jeopardy by the sudden loss of their family.

With no fortune, these women were nearly unmarriageable and might be required to enter the servant class as a governess of wealthy children in order to provide a living for themselves.

Religion:

god made women as a 'helper' to man, predominantly Christian society, viewed Eve as the epitome of a deceitful woman

Economic power and how this was changing

1870: women's property act
1922: equal inheritance permitted
1956: equal pay in public sector jobs e.g. teachers
1986: women allowed to retire at the same age as men

Biological factors:

Biological factors:
Childbirth/childcare, social pressure e.g. appearances, temperaments
Men and women were considered to live in separate spheres

Overview of regency England

•Regency England coincided with a major upsurge in cultural life e.g. architecture and music. George III was ruling, but from 1810 onwards his son ruled in his place as Prince Regent

Samuel Johnson's definition of Sensibility

Samuel Johnson's 1755 dictionary described it as a "quickness of sensation or perception"

Later definitions of sensibility

Later definitions focussed on sensibility as a response to external objects- suggesting a far more self-indulgent and dangerous form of behaviour

Mary Wollstencraft on sensibility

Writer Mary Wollstencraft (1792) believed that men have enslaved women to the aesthetic gratifications of the weak and trembling sensibility and that freedom can only be obtained by the wholesale reflection of sensibility in favour of sense women will gain equality by being balanced and logical

Marriage S+S

-Seen to be the aim of all women in the 18th and 19th century.

-Marriage was possible at 16, desirable at 18, worries of becoming an old maid began at 20.

-Women's reputation (e.g. their virtue or chastity) was vitally important to the whole family's social position as well as her chances of attracting a husband.

-Wives were not independent, but marriage was the only freedom girls could aim for.

Classicism and romanticism

The turn of the 19th century marked the transfer from Classicism to Romanticism and Austen uses Marianne to explore the practicality of Romanticism in a society where marriage was vital for a woman's success.

Austen's debating worth of ideals

Austen almost seems to debate the worth of the Classicism and Romanticism ideals through Marianne and Elinor's societal exploration and as such, it could be suggested that either are more relevant to 19th Century English society but that the novel ultimately ends in both Dashwood daughters being happily married further highlights the ideology of society to lean towards a secularised family unit in which marriage is an ultimate life goal for most

Reason and emotion

Reason and emotion were vigorously debated in the first half of the nineteenth century as Enlightenment attitudes were challenged by Romantics preferring imagination and personal feeling

Social Consequences of Elopement & Sensibility

Johnson Elopement was often equated with social ruin

> indicates sexual temptation before marriage.

>Johnson a transgression of social decorum and female virtue- used to explore the failings of sensibility within the marriage market as she emotionally surrenders herself (Product of romanticism)

>Even if sex doesn’t occur (as with Mari), society sees the act as a lapse in decorum — “an immorality.”

>Johnson ‘the satisfactions of sensibility exact a heavy price in the idealized morbidity of women characters’ (men can retain credibility)

- Lydia (from Pride and Prejudice, elopement to Wicham, her ‘sensibility is shallow’ manifesting as vanity and impulsiveness, and affects her families reputation only salvaged by darcy ‘women’s reputations are communal property’, doesnt die)

Eliza (from Sense and Sensibility) do give in to such temptations, worsening their social standing.

>Mari avoids this, but is still blamed because elopement symbolizes the risk of impropriety

>Johnson “objects of a mournful gaze rather than subjects of their own fate.” (Suffering is performative not transformative)

-Culture of sensibility ‘constructs femininity as inherently vulnerable and self destructive’ (parodied in Beckford’s Modern Novel Writing)

>encouraged to feel intensely but punished harshly for acting upon them

>Mari’s illness is part physical (preference for wild weather) and part emotional (sensibility taken to the extreme)

>she critiques this ideology by ‘denying the expected tragic ends’ and challenges ideas on the value of a woman

Mari doesnt die and her recovery is framed as an act of will

Liz Bennet refuses passivity in suffering

Eli’s ‘quite strength’ prevents performative self destruction

Fallen women

-In 18th- and 19th-century literature, the "fallen woman" is a recurring and ideologically loaded trope.

>woman who has transgressed sexual norms—typically through premarital sex—and whose fall is often presented as inevitable, tragic, and morally instructive.

>Her body and suffering are used to reaffirm patriarchal values about female virtue, punishment, and passivity.

>she acts to evoke pity, warn virtuous women, and bear societies anxieties about female sexuality

> “The victim’s death spares us the mess of lasting conflict and the necessity of social change.”- narrative convenience

-Hogarth’s engravings of a harlot’s progression- visual moral lesson on the decline of women

-This trope is central to sensibility literature, where women's pain becomes the emotional spectacle through which men reaffirm their own morality or sensitivity (parodied by Beckford)

>suffering is romantic- emphasis on the fragility of life and youthful beauty, the strength of emotion, and disobedience to society

>Johnson in "novels of sensibility," women die after social disgrace (e.g., suicide, extreme guilt), but sometimes even without real transgressions. Death becomes a moral punctuation

> “The betrayed heroine also "interests" others as a good story, and the closure offered by her death permits listeners ritualistically to tap sensations of softening pity.” She criticises ‘emotional voyeurism’ which reinforces men’s emotional superiority while women are ‘silenced’ or ‘destroyed’

>Johnson “objects of a mournful gaze rather than subjects of their own fate.” (Suffering is performative not transformative)

-Culture of sensibility ‘constructs femininity as inherently vulnerable and self destructive’

>encouraged to feel intensely but punished harshly for acting upon them

>>If dying as the exemplary Clarissa does is arguably the best thing a wronged woman can do, we are entitled to ask how well the codes of sensibility serve women when the same qualities that render them attractive also kill them?

>Austen critiques this ideology by ‘denying the expected tragic ends’ and challenges ideas on the value of a woman, cantering survival, and exposes the hypocrisy of Will

IN AUSTEN

- Lydia (from Pride and Prejudice, elopement to Wicham, her ‘sensibility is shallow’ manifesting as vanity and impulsiveness, and affects her families reputation only salvaged by darcy ‘women’s reputations are communal property’, doesnt die)

>Mr. Collins’s declaration that Lydia’s death would have been preferable to her elopement — not because he mourns her, but because death removes the messy, shameful scandal of female agency. Death sanitizes.

>Lydia’s survival is not triumphant—she becomes a cautionary example of what happens when women internalize superficial values of flirtation, romance, and vanity without self-awareness.

>Unlike tragic heroines of sensibility, Lydia does not repent, nor does she show emotional depth- ironic a character who should be ruined is not, and yet she is still trapped in a lifelong, unhappy consequence

-Eliza (from Sense and Sensibility)

> “Her deterioration is involuntary, she need not fall by her own hand, and we need not worry about the problem of suicide... she is punished without overt violence.”

>She never speaks for herself; her story is filtered through Brandon’s sympathetic narration—a perfect example of Johnson’s idea that men appropriate women’s pain for their own sentimental narratives.

>Austen questions whether the sympathy extended to her is truly effective or just emotionally self-serving.

>She could have remained fixed in sentimental purity, and he could have been the tragic lover- but her sexual impurity robs him of this

-Marianne comes close to the trope through sensibility

>Her near-fatal illness functions symbolically as internalised punishment for misplaced passion and emotional excess.

>her illness prompts ‘a frenzy of male storytelling’ (her hypothetical deathbed becomes a stage for Will’s moral theatre where he can be the tragic lover)

>she is viewed as useless once her beauty fades (‘destroys the bloom forever’)- if she cant marry well she is a drain, redundant (John doesnt wish her death but his transactional approach is cold)

>But Austen saves her (through her family- a subtle rejection fo the romantic structure). She recovers physically and emotionally, and reorients her moral compass through self-discipline—not male control.

Clarissa

-Novel by Richardson

-Wollstonecraft suspected Richardson of misogynist morality in ‘Clarissa’ that does her no honour, serves only to confirm the deadly power of rape in patriarchal society (Johnson)

>narrates a heroic death that conforms to patriarchal values about female "virtue"

>emerging from a drug-induced madness, Clarissa designs her coffin, writes her will, enjoins her survivors to forgiveness, comforts grieving friends, and finally departs for her heavenly father's house.

>reflects the author's conviction that a paragon has no reason for being once she becomes damaged property, that only a lesser woman would even want to survive a fate worse than death

>virginity is equated not only with integrity but life force

>If dying as the exemplary Clarissa does is arguably the best thing a wronged woman can do, we are entitled to ask how well the codes of sensibility serve women when the same qualities that render them attractive also kill them?

Rousseau v Burke v Wollstonecraft on the role of women

-The 1790s Debate: Should Women Be Physically & Morally Strong?

-Wollstonecraft (liberal) argued virtue has no sexual character — i.e., men and women are equally capable of moral and rational development.

• Therefore, women should be educated like men: to be strong, autonomous, rational individuals.

But this clashed with both:

-Burke (Conservative “Old Regime” voices) who celebrated women’s delicacy and weakness, and

• In Vindication of the Rights of Men Wollstonecraft condemns him for praising the “endearing properties of female weakness, littleness, prettiness, ornamentality and delicacy”

links to Kilman’s jealousy of the conventional MD who’s ‘small pink face’ has an ‘air of freshness’

Or Mari’s ‘bloom of youth’, she reflects a male fantasy of female weakness and passivity

• She calls his sentimental moral theory “physically vitiating to women” — it weakens them in both body and moral capacity.

• It connects to male tastes championing a form of beauty that is vulnerable

-Rousseau (radical), who also imagined women’s role as dependent and ornamental.

• He teaches girls to be good wives, not good citizens.

• The domestic sphere becomes their prison.

• They gain value through dependency — their virtue = fidelity, not agency, which is what Wollstonecraft resists in Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

Coelebs in Search of a Wife

-1808 by Hannah More

-A conduct book disguised as a novel

>promotes female meekness as essential for being marriageable

>Anti-heroine Amelia Rattle is dismissed not just for being outspoken, but for being physically strong and confident (dismissed as a tom boy, for jumping into a carriage alone)

• In Mrs Dalloway, Sally is also bold, physically uninhibited, unafraid of scandal — she’s admired for her daring, yet also a disruptive figure within the bounds of genteel society

• Women’s bodily independence and spiritedness are treated as grotesque or laughable in these conservative texts.

• V in Austen Elizabeth Bennet’s confidence is magnetic

SUMMARY

-explorations of love and marriage, framed through the experiences and insights of Charles, a young man seeking a suitable partner after being influenced by his parents' values.

>reflections on the attributes of a good wife

>he grapples with the tension between his expectations and the realities of the women he encounters.

Elizabeth Bennet’s confidence

-Johnson “Elizabeth Bennet’s shamelessly athletic march through the muddy countryside […] overrules politically charged subtexts about female propriety.”

-Elizabeth breaks decorum through movement — her:

• Muddy petticoat

• “Heightened complexion”

• Physical exertion

- While the ladies at Netherfield are scandalised, the men are drawn to her vitality

>it’s not her modesty, but her confidence that’s magnetic.

“The operations of sensibility require the suppression of women's health and resilience” – but Austen doesn’t play along.

Prof Mullan’s:

• Darcy falls in love because of Elizabeth’s wit, boldness, and cheek — not despite them.

• She is the only woman who has ever teased him.

• Even Jane Austen’s own family found Elizabeth’s character surprising — “bold,” “irreverent,” “mischievous.”

CONTRASTS WITH

-Coelebs in Search of a Wife which encourages meekness

> Anti-heroine Amelia Rattle is dismissed not just for being outspoken, but for being physically strong and confident

-Burke who claimed women to be delicate and weak

-Rousseau who claimed women to be ornamental and dependent

Beckford ‘Modern Novel Writing’

-1796

-parodies the overused sentimental formula:

  - Heroine Lucinda faints at a stranger’s flattery.

  - They share an “interesting tete-a-tete” in a mossy bower.

  - She falls ill after seeing an ex — and dies “as dead as Julius Caesar.”

  - A schoolmaster writes her a dramatic epitaph about a "faux pas" that leads to her death.

Politics of Sensibility

-Johnson sensibility was gendered. It was considered a virtue predominantly associated with women, a notion Austen often interrogates in her novels.

>Women were seen as more naturally sentimental and emotional

>there was a class based presumption that sensibility in UC was regulated and refined where as in WC it was unsophisticated and dangerous

There are two competing views on the role of sensibility:

Radical View (Jacobins)

- Sensibility as emotional individualism; a rebellion against social norms and authority.

- These figures praise subjectivity and personal feeling over inherited rules.

-Sensibility as a moral virtue is framed around the capacity for compassion, empathy, and the ability to be moved by the suffering of others.

>mark of refinement and civilized society-capable of moral judgment, as their emotional responses to others’ pain indicated their moral integrity.

Conservative (Burkean) View

- Sensibility as a tool for maintaining order — a self-regulating morality through emotion.

>Women’s emotional excesses* were romanticized in novels but also depicted as dangerous, subjugating women, as it allows others—particularly male figures in these novels—to define and regulate what is “appropriate” emotional behavior.

- As Carol Kay summarizes:

    > Sensibility is "the passionate sensitiveness to other people's emotions... which diffuses morality in a system of rules that do not require the heavy hand of political authority."

>Rather than resisting rules, sensibility here enforces them internally — a psychological policing of behavior via guilt, shame, empathy.

AUSTEN

- Austen’s writing emerges during the political Reaction (backlash against revolutionary ideas).

- Rules around women’s conduct — especially in love and death — become ideological battlegrounds.

  - Conservative: Sensibility is dangerous, excessive, and immoral. Women must control it.

  - Progressives: Sensibility is an oppressive cultural demand that should be questioned.

-Sensibility is both a means of resistance and a mechanism of social control, her characters’ journeys involve learning to navigate these complex emotional landscapes in order to achieve personal growth and social integration.

>Marianne’s sympathy is self-indulgent, Elinor’s sympathy is measured and self-controlled, illustrating the moral value of empathy that does not spiral into self-pity or indulgence.

> not an ‘antisentimental novel’, sense is shown to be flawed, but it is the lack of balance that is criticised

This is the landscape in which Austen is often seen as practicing "**conservative conservatism**" — suggesting her novels lean toward the idea that women must accept, not resist, traditional authority and propriety.

Women with second attachments

-Narrative disrupters

-Women like Eliza and Lucy Steele who form “second attachments” violate the sentimental script that values women as monogamous, sacrificial, and emotionally static.

Johnson notes “Women who form ‘second attachments,’ as poor Eliza did, distress established practices.”

-Lucy, by securing a better match with Robert Ferrars, appropriates the male prerogative to choose

Tilney ‘You will allow that in both, man has the advantage of choice; woman only the power of refusal.’

>This makes her unsettling because she disrupts the traffic in women — a system in which women’s value lies in singular, sentimental devotion.

>Lucy Steele would have been endearing had she “wilted decently away upon inferring the estranged Edward's second attachment to Elinor”, An earlier death would have "happily" spared Brandon's Eliza future pain by placing her far outside the reach of other men

-Marianne is mocked for her contempt of ‘second attachment’

>This sentimental doctrine suggests such women to appear gross and improper, as it gives her an unladylike parity in the conduct of her sentimental and erotic life

>Marianne’s journey, in particular, involves a complete reassessment of her values, before she is able to ‘see’ Willoughby and Brandon correctly

>her rite of passage requires her to accept that ‘her passionate opinions and principles have been tested by experience and observation and proved false.’  In rejecting her ‘narcissistic subjectivism’, she learns to acknowledge ‘the empirical reality that constitutes a shared world’ [Morris].

Engagement

Male spectator of female suffering

- In both Smith’s and Hume’s accounts, morality emerges through spectatorship. Seeing suffering provokes sympathy, which in turn defines ethical subjectivity.

> Brandon and Willoughby are not simply spectators — they are dramatists, scripting women’s decline to perform their own virtue, grief, or suffering.

>they want the tragic woman not just to die, but to die narratively, in a way that centers their subjectivity.

-Women cannot be spectators, they are watched not watchers, Cixous

> Their suffering is not a narrative tool for their own self-expression, but for male moral gratification.

- Willoughby, in particular, turns women’s trauma into sentimental capital without real moral growth. His tale becomes a way to elicit pity for himself, not for Eliza or Marianne.

- Brandon, while more sympathetic, still fails in practical moral terms (as Green observed): he abandons the elder Eliza, and places the younger in harm’s way. His pity is passive.

Walter Allen on sensibility

  - As Walter Allen notes, sensibility had moved from being a tool of moral reform to a kind of emotional self-indulgence, especially for the privileged.

Eliza

- Eliza is the quintessential "fallen woman" of the sentimental tradition.

>her story is structured like a sentimental novella- told from his pov and serving as his tragic backstory

>“objects of a mournful gaze rather than subjects of their own fate.”

>Seduced and abandoned, her fate is tied to a long history of women who are "wept over" but never allowed to narrate their own stories.

- Brandon’s telling of her story to Elinor is saturated with sympathy,

>Johnson point out, sympathy does not equal action. Brandon fails to protect her, and his guardianship of the younger Eliza is careless at best.

> Johnson “women of feeling weep over their own troubles, while men weep only as they look on.”

>she is objectified- becoming a moral lesson as opposed to a person

»The novel of sentiment’s popular motif of the decay and subsequent death of a wronged or fallen woman inspires Marianne to live her life in accordance with this literary model; her ‘real’ life, in turn, becomes a dramatic story to entertain others

Johnson “The betrayed heroine also "interests" others as a good story, and the closure offered by her death permits listeners ritualistically to tap sensations of softening pity.

“Because her deterioration is involuntary, she need not fall by her own hand, and we need not worry about the problem of suicide”

• Claudia speaks on how the death of the heroine reflects her misdoings- Eliza’s body betrayed her

Colonel Brandon "Happy had it been if she had not lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me occasioned”

• Could have remained fixed in sentimental purity, and he could have been the tragic lover- but her sexual impurity robs him of this

• Jaqueline Green argues Brandon doesnt learn either: his experience with the first Eliza does not prevent him from being a careless gaurdian to the second interpretation

Society

Austen uses satire to mock society: the obsessive and competitive nature of mothers; female attitudes and values; the aristocracy and upper classes; marriage for social security; role of men; social expectations of women

Motherhood context 1920s

• Women had just obtained the right to vote, and so mothers would have played a larger role in society than previously

  >though employment opportunities greatly increased for women in the 20s, many traditional women still preferred the stay-at-home mother lifestyle.  

• This could also be due to the fact that although there were more job opportunities for women, working women would still be subject to verbal and sometimes even physical abuse in the workplace, so staying at home was a safer option.  

• That being said, the 1920s were a breakout time for the now popular ‘working mother’.  

Female attitudes and values

Selfishness of women e.g. Mrs John Dashwood, Mrs Ferrar's response to Edward's engagement to Lucy Steele

The aristocracy and upper class

use of caricatures e.g. Mrs Ferrars, undercuts their trivial problems with Eliza's story = what happens to fall of women

Marriage for social security

Females characterised by need to marry, "it is a truth universally acknowledged"

Role of men

satirises greed with John Dashwood, Mr Palmer being manipulated by his wife, Edward

Social expectations of women

exemplified in the story of the Eliza's - different rules for women, Willoughby easily gets off

Values and expectations of women

The values and expectations of the society Austen presents also relate to the almost hierarchal classification of people within the novel where money is, again, a significant factor in socialisation. John Dashwood typifies this dependence on money to govern relations between individuals, "Who is Colonel Brandon? Is he a man of fortune?" with this query over the material being typical of society's values and dependence on wealth at the time

Family life

Parental bonds with children not often very strong, siblings often became very close - especially females because they stayed at home so much; Infant mortality was very high: life expectancy was 35 at the turn of the century; It was against etiquette to withdraw oneself or to show great emotion in public

sons

Aim of parents was to have one (preferably two) sons; only elder sons to inherit father's estate - they were expected to involve themselves in politics to continue family's privileges and interests; younger sons could go into the church or the army/ navy (navy considered more senior than the army)

daughters

Women were still regarded basically as a chattel, under the authority first of her father and then her husband. In the propertied classes she was herself treated as part of the property - 'given in with an estate' when she married. Her very individuality, legally speaking was gone; families with no sons could not pass any property to their daughters - it was 'entailed' to nearest male relative e.g. Mr Collins

social mobility

Women were more socially mobile than men; as king as they were gentlewomen or pretty, a good marriage could raise their social status; more common for men than women to marry beneath them

money

For the landowners and the gentry, management of all financial matters was a gentleman's prerogative. By law and by custom, a woman was granted very little control over money

evidence of importance of money

This theme is denoted by the lack of personalisation shown by Austen in her adherence to archetypal business language regarding the "legal inheritor" and the "bequeath[ing]" of the "estate". This introduction to the novel establishes the material as a central feature within the novel, potentially provoking thought into the ways in which it interplays with the social functions of the characters. Through Marianne and Willoughby's failed relationship, it could be perceived that money is the primary motivator within society and that affection has little power in influencing decisions or actions.

Manners and morals (SS v CD)

Etiquette was very important: if one broke the rules/traditions of the local/wider community, they would be gossiped about

BUT

Victorians – clear sense of morality/Christian ethos. However, after war, moral certainty undermined - weakening grasp on absolutist faith in God

Accomplishments

A lady could show her gentility through the display of her "accomplishments, sets of skills encouraged and cultivated in young women, skills which were thought to help make a home more lively, entertaining or beautiful such as needlework and drawing. A woman with many of these skills was thought to be "highly accomplished," and, evidently, more marriageable.

Role of women

Typical of the female conduct books is Dr James Fordyce's two volume 'Sermons to Young Women' (1765) which Mr Collins tried to read aloud to the Bennet girls. The sermons set out in considerable detail what a good and amiable woman is: obedient, modest, gentle and formed to be man's companion. Woman's place is the home and her centre interest her family

London in the novel

Pinnacle of Marianne's sensibility - turning point for her due to the negative consequences of her inappropriate sensibility behaviour there towards Willoughby, which is consequently gossiped about. It is here that Elinor attempts to escape from the distractions in life as she can no longer pursue Edward. We see the depth of her grief/despair in London when surrounder by others and having to cope with Marianne's behaviour

The rise of the novel

In the 18th century the novel was an important medium for the articulation of women's concerns, and its rise was centrally bound up with the growth of a female literary voice acceptable within patriarchal society; No woman of the time thought of herself as 'feminist' as the word was not in use then; but woman's nature and proper role were subjects of serious debate, and many women took up positions which we might usefully describe as feminist

First version of Sense and Sensibility
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The first version of the novel was written as an epistolary novel entitled "Elinor and Marianne." Letters also allow characters to reveal secrets and convey their attitudes and personalities- either to confirm what we know in revelation (e.g. Darcy confessing his love). Austen used letters as a literary device in the interests of plot or character development or to make a moral point

Revised Sense and Sensibility

She further revised it in 1809-10, shortly after she moved with her mother and sister Cassandra to a small house in Chawton on her brother Edward's estate. The cost of publication was more than a third of her household's 460-pound annual income, so the risk was substantial.

Sense and Sensibility publication

In 1811, Sense and Sensibility became the first published novel of the English author Jane Austen. The first edition was only said to be "by a lady" and although publishing anonymously prevented her from acquiring an authorial reputation, it also enabled her to preserve her privacy at a time when entering the public sphere was associated with a reprehensible loss of femininity, an anonymity that persisted until her death in 1817

Could be considered didactic

For Austen sense was more important than sensibility and more necessary for a healthy individual life and a robust social system, hence her focus on Elinor's perspective

Interiors

Often set in interiors e.g. drawing rooms where people meet, mix and reveal their dubious morals and affections; could reflect women being confined to the domestic sphere

Agency

The ability or choice to take action
(consider power, control and position with regard to gender)

Gender

Initially, a term only used in reference to grammatical construction
The social and culturally understood characteristics of masculinity and femininity developed in sexology and anthropology

Nightingale on the frivolity of UC fem existence

-'it strikes one as odd to find a young man sitting idle in his mother's drawing' or even 'doing needlework, and reading little books, how we should
laugh at them!' > 'Is man's time more valuable than woman's?
-'Women are never supposed to have any occupation of sufficient importance not to be interrupted, and women themselves have accepted this, have written books to support it'
'They have accustomed themselves to consider intellectual occupation as a merely selfish amusement, which is their duty' to give up for every'

Feminism

The belief that women should be afforded the same rights, power, treatment and opportunities as men in all areas of life.

Objectification

The process or action of treating a person as an object
(thereby a thing without feelings, opinions or rights)

Patriarchy

society as organised and controlled by men in which they use their power to their own advantage

Sexism

the belief that the members of one sex are less intelligent, able, skilful, etc. than the members of the other sex ,

Male gaze

the way in which the visual arts and literature depict the world and women from a masculine point of view
Women are presented as objects of male pleasure
this reinforces male power
coined by Laura Mulvey in 1975
(Austen never has men discussing women alone and never adopts a male pers,)

Bildungsroman

German term meaning ' education novel
refers to a story about the events and experiences of the protagonist as they grow from child to adult.

Epistolary

A piece of literature contained in or carried on by letters

Jane Austen

little surviving biographical material
daughter of a clergyman (understood the financial pressures of genteel families)
at twenty she became romantically involved with a man without sufficient financial resources
later proposed to by a wealthy man (security and opportunity) which she accepted before changing her mind

Viginia Woolf

born to an affluent, well-connected family
part of the Bloomsbury group
had many romantic relationships with women outside of, and supported by, her marriage
suffered with mental illness

Charlotte Bronte

inspired by her own experience in a boarding school where two of her sisters died

Could women work? How is it portrayed in writing?

PRE WW1
Middle-class women could be governesses (cheap labour) or actresses (viewed with the disdain of sex workers)
Lower-class women (less repped in these novels) could do manual, outside labour (mainly domestic, mercantile or agricultural)
There was an alleged dichotomy of women being inside and men working, WCW showed that to be false (the idea was to separate middle from lower women)
WW1
Brought women to the workforce
As care work became women dominated there was a cultural devaluing of it
POST-1960s
Dissatisfied suburban housewife
LATER
Fulfilling careers

Dichotomy

Two opposite parts of one whole

First wave feminism

late 1700s-1900s
focused on women's education and suffarage

Second Wave Feminism

1960s-1980s
focused on political activism (equal working conditions)
feminist rhetoric in academia focused on examining the cultural, economic, and political treatment of women

Third Wave Feminism

early 1990s-today
re-examination of white-woman centred feminist action
focused on intersectionality

Female sexuality

(Often associated with a reductive view of Victorian public chastity)
AUSTEN TIME
Women often used as tools of marriage settlements to transfer income
VICTORIAN
Expectation for women to remain chaste in spite of men's promiscuity
1885 raised the age of consent to 16 to prevent exploitation but tightened laws around homosexuality (though wlw wasn't illegalised it was viewed as obscene)
1900s
Contaception (though initially only given to married women) and greater education > female sexuality revolution

Divorce timeline

Until 1857 divorce was basically impossible for nonwealthy people and women as they had to go through parliament
(but men could divorce on adultery and women needed additional factors)
1969 could divorce without adultery
2020 no fault divorce

Woolf x Vita/Lesbianism in woolf

-Woolf was in an intimate relationship with author Sackville-West (first met at a 1922 dinner party) exchanged flirty, lyrical letters
-Woolf was jealous of her ability to mother and be beautiful, leonard refused children out of fear for his wife's mental health)
-Careful of anachronistic labels (Woolf called SW a 'pronounced Sapphist')!
-Letters are physical (get lost, take a while, misunderstandings) but attempts to impress with writing skill
-Woolf wrote Orlando for and about her 'the longest and most charming love letter' and 'the first trans novel in the english lang', so personal she asked SW for permission

-They were open about their relationship, fem illegalisation was proposed but never passed (delegitimized lesbians, women viewed as sexually passive and desireless, sexuality only nec for reproduction)
-Thriving underground lesbian nightlife (restrictions on intoxicants, allowed in private clubs without licence > speakeasies> catered for same sex encounters, restricted for uc bohemian lesbians)
-Postwar (absence of men) lesbians were becoming more prominent

John Knox and male supremacy

-Controversial work (The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women) of Scot reformer John Knox 1558, arguing the rule of woman is contrary to the Bible

-Believed he was an authority on religion

-Unpopular with the monarchy and fled to mainland Europe 1554 (Scot+England ran by women)

-Argued against John Calvin who believed it was acceptable when situation demanded

-Targeted Queen Mary I- against her as catholic, her rule goes against Bible “God, by the order of his creation, has [deprived] woman of authority and dominion”

-Believed fem leadership went against the natural order, women serving men was a virtue from God

-Civil obedience was a prerequisite for heaven (to achieve social harmony they must submit)

-Women come after men as Adam did from eve, and eve was punished by being subjected to men, men were a superior reflection of God

Civil Obedience

-John Knox preached the importance of male supremacy to enforce civil obedience

-JA's heroines ultimately follow convention (influenced by the times prioritisation of social harmony + fulfilling role)
-BUT by setting psychological challenges she shows she values her heroines minds and doesn't view them as inferior, though they must follow convention > TONY TANNER