Unfeminine Legacies from The Woman in White to Six Chapters of a Man's Life

Unfeminine Legacies from Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White to Victoria Cross’s Six Chapters of a Man’s Life

Hannah Calderazzo, University of Florida

In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), Jane rejects the loveless marriage proposal of her cousin, St. John. She states that he would inadvertently kill her through the union, and that he is killing her even now. Upon hearing her statement, St. John retorts “‘I should kill you—I am killing you? Your words are such as ought not to be used: violent, unfeminine, and untrue,’” he exclaims (Brontë 475). Galled by Jane’s passion and her straightforward refusal, St. John accuses Jane of being “unfeminine.”

This term, “unfeminine,” is used throughout Victorian fiction to describe progressive heroines. These women usually embrace early feminism, most often through resisting male ideas of femininity, as well as denying men’s romantic advances. For example, Jane Eyre rejects her cousin’s proposal, and leaves Mr. Rochester when it is revealed he has a secret wife. Maggie Tulliver of George Elliot’s Mill on the Floss (1860) refuses an advantageous marriage in order to preserve the feelings of her beloved cousin, Lucy. Helen of Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) flees her abusive husband in order to save both herself and her son. These fictional women are only a few examples of women called or seen as “unfeminine,” but they provoke the question: what constitutes the Victorian “unfeminine?” Is the unfeminine woman simply a woman who steps outside her society’s expectations, and attempts to leave the safety of the domestic sphere? Is she a woman who defies and denies male assumptions and advances? Or is there something more to a Victorian woman that might make her “unfeminine?”

To explore the concept of the Victorian “unfeminine” in terms of its embodiment, I compare the characters Marian Halcombe, from Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White (1860), and Theodora Dudley from Victoria Cross’s Six Chapters of a Man’s Life (1903). Marian Halcombe is a pivotal character in The Woman in White. She is noted for her unusual “unfeminine” appearance, as well as her intelligence and courage, which she uses to help protect her half-sister, Laura Fairlie. Along with fellow protagonist Walter Hartright, Marian rescues Laura from a malicious and complex plot to secure her fortune. The equally “unfeminine” Theodora is a New Woman character who first appeared in a selected chapter published in The Yellow Book magazine, “Theodora: A Fragment” (1895), before being republished in Victoria Cross’s Six Chapters of a Man’s Life (1903). Entrancing the narrator, Cecil, with her unconventional appearance and morals, she later disguises herself in men’s clothing and runs away with Cecil, to live as his partner while he works in the Middle East.

These two women also come from different genres of Victorian fiction: Marian is a product of mid-century sensation fiction, and Theodora is representative of the New Woman from the end of the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, both women embody the Victorian “unfeminine” through a set of distinct physical features and superior intellect. Viewed through the eyes of male narrators, they share physical characteristics that starkly distance them from conventionally attractive Victorian women. Additionally, both women are noted by the male narrators and characters of their stories for being extremely intelligent, to the extent that they surpass the men in terms of knowledge and cunning. I argue that these women seem to represent a more ideal and desirable body, as they not only demonstrate superior physical strength, but also intellect.

In examining what physical characteristics made the Victorian woman “feminine,” Havelock Ellis’s Studies in the Psychology of the Sex (1900) is a useful guide for understanding an ideal of feminine beauty during the nineteenth century. Providing a list of specific physiological features considered attractive, Ellis’s Studies promoted Victorian beliefs about tracing character and morality from physical features. In Volume IV, Ellis lays out a list of physiological traits that epitomize feminine beauty, including: Delicate bony structure, long and abundant hair, no body hair, delicate skin, small face, and high and slender eyebrows. Ellis also discusses the European preference for the “fair,” or women with blonde hair. Although he acknowledges that there have been notable brunette beauties, Ellis states that “the extremely dark type is always excluded, and so it would seem probable is the extremely fair type...” concluding that, “Beauty is still fair” (CH II). Besides these physical features that define female beauty, Ellis also includes a list of characteristics women should have that are important for reproduction, such as: broad pelvis, rounded forms and breasts, and rounded and thick thighs. This list of physical characteristics defines a physical feminine “ideal,” indicating a mixture between qualities for physical attractiveness and important traits for child-bearing.

Havelock’s ideal features align with qualities important to the eighteenth-century Swedish physiognomist, Johann Kasper Lavater, and his studies of physiognomy, a pseudoscience Lavater popularized in his Essays on Physiognomy (1778). Physiognomists like Lavater analyzed physical features of the human face, connecting them not only with understanding hierarchies of beauty, but also an individual’s class affiliation and degree of morality. According to Lavater, features of the face and body proclaimed not only a woman’s beauty, but also her virtue. For example, pale skin was indicative of sexual purity, and according to Lavater “Blue eyes are more significant of weakness, effeminacy, and yielding than brown or black” (53). A woman’s blonde hair also designated that she was a true domestic angel. Even rosebud lips proclaimed “fastidiousness” as opposed to thick lips, which displayed a sensuous desire for pleasure (Fahnestock 342). Therefore, stereotypical blonde-haired, blue-eyed heroines were more than just beautiful—their beauty proclaimed their morality, delicacy, and their suitability as wives and mothers. Lavater and Ellis’s descriptions of women’s desirable features were widely influential and significantly impacted how nineteenth-century readers were expected to receive the contrasting physical descriptions of Marian and Theodora.

Although Marian and Theodora were created some thirty years apart, they share several distinct physical characteristics. When the narrator, Walter Hartright, meets Marian Halcombe, he explains that “The lady’s complexion was almost swarthy, and the dark down on her upper lip was almost a moustache. She had a large, firm, masculine mouth and jaw; prominent, piercing, resolute brown eyes; and thick, coal-black hair, growing unusually low on her forehead” (Collins 35). Although Theodora does not share Marian’s darker complexion, the narrator, Cecil, describes how Theodora similarly “differed so much from the ordinary feminine type” (Cross 54). Like Marian, Theodora has dark hair and “gleaming, brilliant, swimming eyes” that are “[d]ark, [and] wine-colored” (Cross 68, 174). She also has a mustache, as Cecil notices “above, on [her] upper lip… a narrow, glossy, black line” (Cross 20).

These women’s physical characteristics diverge from the idealistic vision of femininity defined within Ellis’s list of desirable features, while also creating a contrasting appearance to that of the standard Victorian heroine. Lavater explains that in regards to brown eyes, “I find more strength, manhood, and thought, combined with brown than with blue” (Lavater 53). Even the designation of brightness in eyes like Marian’s and Theodora’s have their own connotations, as “[b]right eyes, slow of motion, bespeak the hero, great acts, audacious, cheerful, one feared by his enemies” (Lavater 58). Black hair was also thought to personify “[i]ntensity of feeling” (Stocker 28). Marian and Theodora, if observed through the lens of physiognomy, are granted more agency, passion, and intelligence than the stereotypical Victorian beauty. They are observed to be more thoughtful, and possessive of more mental, and possibly even physical strength, than the passive and ornamental “Angel in the House,” from other novels. This indicates that these women are viewed as “unfeminine” because their physical characteristics convey a sense of resistance to the norm for Victorian beauty and morality.

In addition to their physical appearances, Marian and Theodora embody the “unfeminine” through their unabashed intelligence. Heightened female intelligence was considered abnormal in Victorian society, where belief in male superiority curtailed female brilliance and independence. Upper-class women were encouraged to pursue education in “feminine skills” in order to prepare them to become the “Angel in the House,” or the “perfect” domestic figure, who made the home both literally and symbolically a safe haven from the outside world. As one parliamentary report in the nineteenth century stated, women should be educated to be “decorative, modest, marriageable beings’” (“Women’s Education”). These necessary skills included subjects such as music, languages like French, Greek, and Latin, and classes in social graces and etiquette. Upper-class women were also granted some scholarship as children in order to take part in intelligent conversation. Michèle Cohen describes the importance of such conversation in the home as an educational tool for children in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Discussions were thought to, “[develop] children’s critical thought, [enlarge] their mind and [allow] the acquisition of knowledge… [while] training them in the art of expressing their thoughts clearly” (Cohen 456). Conversation itself was a key part of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century education, as children needed to learn early on the importance of being able to hold eloquent discussions among their peers. Not only was this believed to make individuals more successful in society, but also in their relations with others.

There was also a strong, biologically determined view that women were physically incapable of being intelligent. Paul Broca, the nineteenth-century founder of French anthropology, stated that “In general, the brain is larger in mature adults than in the elderly, in men than in women… There is a remarkable relationship between the development of intelligence and the volume of the brain” (Sowerwine 289). In “The Mental Differences Between Men and Women,” (1887) the nineteenth-century evolutionary theorist George Romanes argued that women were expected to have, “a marked inferiority of intellectual power” because “the average brain-weight of women is about five ounces less than that of men” (Romanes 655, 654). While Romanes admits that girls are more inquisitive than boys before puberty, he asserts that, once the brain is fully developed, men have “a greater power of amassing knowledge” (Romanes 655). Thus, scientific professionals established as fact the idea that men were naturally more intelligent during the Victorian era.

Nonetheless, one of Marian’s most distinct qualities in The Woman in White is her extraordinary and “unfeminine” intelligence. When Walter first meets Marian in the novel, it is one of the traits he immediately notices, as he describes that “her expression” was “bright, frank, and intelligent” (Collins 35). It is Marian’s mental abilities, such as her sharp sense of observation, that help to shield her sister Laura from Sir Percival and Count Fosco. For example, when Marian hears the Count and Sir Percival go out to talk in private on the veranda, Marian climbs across the rooftop to overhear their conversation. In order to make herself as inconspicuous as possible, Marian explains that

A complete change in my dress was imperatively necessary for many reasons. I took off my silk gown to begin with, because the slightest noise from it on that still night might have betrayed me. I next removed the white and cumbersome parts of my underclothing, and replaced them by a petticoat of dark flannel… In my present dress, when it was held close about me, no man could have passed through the narrowest spaces more easily than I (Collins 313, 314).

Marian understands that travelling across the rooftops is not only the most secure way to overhear the men’s secret conversation, but she also comprehends exactly how to move noiselessly. Her thoughtfulness in changing her wardrobe, in order to be silent, and to make herself physically smaller, demonstrates her cleverness.

Furthermore, it is only when Marian falls ill that the two men are finally able to enact their scheme: imprisoning Laura in the asylum and stealing her fortune. Marian’s “unfeminine” intelligence is even distinctly recognized by these villains, as Count Fosco himself asks Sir Percival, “Can you look at Miss Halcombe, and not see that she has the foresight and the resolution of a man?... With that woman for my enemy, I, with all my brains and experience—I, Fosco, cunning as the devil himself, as you have told me a hundred times—I walk, in your English phrase, upon egg-shells!” (Collins 318). This praise is particularly significant coming from Count Fosco, the scheming mastermind of the story, who Sir Percival both fears and defers to for completing their plot. Furthermore, in the same scene of the adapted play The Woman in White (1871), in which Count Fosco and Sir Percival converse on the veranda, the Count lectures Sir Percival, saying that in regard to Marian, Sir Percival has “not a tenth part of her brain, or a fiftieth part of her courage” (The Woman in White 48). Throughout the course of both The Woman in White novel, and its stage adaptation, Marian is clearly presented as a brilliant woman, whose intelligence makes her a formidable adversary for Sir Percival and the Count.

Cross’ Theodora is also unabashedly and perceptibly intelligent. In a manner reminiscent of Walter’s initial description of Marian, Cecil remarks how “a tremendous force of intellect sat on the brow… such a curious fire shown in the scintillating eyes” of his beloved Theodora when he first beholds her (Cross 20). Cecil describes how Theodora also has “clear, cultivated tones,” when she addresses him, providing another indicator of her education (Cross 174). She even engages in philosophical discussions with him at several points in the story. Her “ethics of the couch and the floor” proffers a metaphor for sexual behavior that is irresistible to Cecil when he pays Theodora a visit (Cross 166). While the narrator comes to Theodora’s chambers, he takes a seat on the couch, while Theodora sits on the floor. The narrator inquires if Theodora usually prefers the floor, and Theodora answers, “Yes, one feels quite free and at ease lying on the floor, whereas on a couch its limits are narrow, and one has the constraint and bother of taking care one does not roll off” (Cross 165-66). Theodora’s references to staying on the couch evoke the idea of remaining abstinent, which Theodora says is difficult because a person has to constantly worry about giving in to sexual desires. When the narrator comments that if she fell off the couch she would still be on the floor, Theodora replies, “Quite so, but I should have the pain of falling” (Cross 166). From Theodora’s perspective, laying on the floor, or acquiescing to sexual cravings and accepting being a fallen woman, is more freeing because one does not have to endure the ridicule and shame.

While displaying Theodora’s free attitude toward sexuality, this exchange also reveals how clever and cultured Theodora actually is, given the persuasiveness of her argument. Cecil even directly acknowledges Theodora’s aptitude, expressing that “Theodora was in a hundred ways, certainly in intellect and learning, mentally and psychologically, my superior” (Cross 139). Theodora’s cleverness distinguishes her from other women, in the same manner as Marian’s. Yet however celebrated Marian and Theodora may be for their intelligence, they are still rendered “unfeminine” because of their intellectual capabilities. Just as Marian and Theodora’s unique physical appearances render them distinctly unaligned with the “Angel in the House,” their intelligence also displaces them from the “ideal” of Victorian womanhood.

Marian and Theodora therefore oppose the Victorian standards of “femininity,” and are consequently labeled “unfeminine” women. Their physical appearances distance them from the blonde-haired, blue-eyed heroines of many Victorian novels, who not only embody Victorian beauty, but also morality through their physiognomy. Their dark features even reflect the intelligence that is another defining aspect of the “unfeminine.” Placed together, their unique features and heightened intellect shape them into an embodiment of resistance to Victorian femininity. Whereas Victorian society desired women to be beautiful and compliant homemakers, graceful wives and mothers, women such as Marian and Theodora defy these standards. Ultimately, the idea of the “unfeminine” seems to constitute a fear of women extending beyond her “separate sphere,” and intruding into the realm of male superiority.

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Hannah Calderazzo is a third-year English major, concentrating in nineteenth-century British literature. She is co-Editor-in-Chief of PRISM, the UF Honors Program magazine, and has presented research at the North American Victorian Studies Association conference for two years.