Literary Representations of Infancy in Nineteenth- Century British Fiction (SOH09) Wang Zi-Ming, Sean Victoria Junior College NRP Supervisor: Dr Tamara Silvia Wagner (Assoc Prof)
Chosen Texts Elizabeth Gaskell - Ruth (1853) Charles Dickens - Bleak House (1853)
Why these texts? ● Capturing the changes that gripped mid-nineteenth-century British society. ● “Record(ed) details with realism” and their writing was significantly “paralleled by other, non-fictional sources” (158) -Virginia Phillips
Thesis: Both novels employ sentimentalisation to influence perceptions of child-rearing in order to evoke sympathy and a sense of duty towards child-rearing amongst readers.
Rejecting the Refute the idea of Original Sin differently ● Bleak House focuses on the infant’s ○ concept of A innate innocence Original Sin Ruth emphasises the infant’s godliness ○ Enables subsequent sentimentalisation ● The infant’s vulnerability ● The use of The susceptible morality of infants ● B sentimentalisation Portraying them as quasi-religious ● figures
Background: The Victorian Era
Conflicting views on childhood Puritanical concept of Original Sin The Romantic idea of childhood All men are born into a state of sinfulness Originates in Rousseau’s proposal that ● ● (Fisher 223) each person was born as a blank slate (Brantlinger and Thesing 354) “Most widely held” and resulted in a “need ● to curb and control youthful high spirits” It intensified the innate innocence by ● (1) portraying children as immature, playful and even angelic (Heywood 27). - Pamela Horn
Enables a successful sentimentalisation of infancy ● Shifting the commonly held focus on sinfulness ● Induces compassion from readers ● Makes the sentimental depictions of infancy more plausible and acceptable by readers.
Bleak House: Rejecting the concept of Original Sin 1. Peepy is depicted as mischievous and rough ❖ Peepy plays around until he is “not to be found anywhere” (216). ❖ Playing is depicted as rough, as Peepy “tumbled about” (78) ❖ Description of his violent actions, such as biting Prince (481).
Bleak House: Rejecting the concept of Original Sin 2. Mischievous behaviour reframed as part of the infants’ innocence ❖ injuries and bruises are comically dismissed ❖ “perfect little calendars of distress” made as they “notched memoranda of their accidents in their legs" (78).
Bleak House: Rejecting the concept of Original Sin 3. Rough nature of their play is important, providing a sentimental value ❖ Suggests a sentimental value that stems from their reckless and uninhibited fun. ❖ “perfect little calendars of distress” made as they “notched memoranda of their accidents in their legs" (78).
Bleak House: Rejecting the concept of Original Sin 4. Showcasing the innate goodness of infants ❖ Even amidst the lack of parental influence in his life (Kamiyama 4) , Peepy demonstrates incredible self-control. ❖ Although “very miserable”, he submits himself to washing with the “best grace possible” and “making no complaint” (64).
Ruth: Rejecting the concept of Original Sin 1. Infants are depicted with an air of nobility ❖ “Placid dignity” and “queenly calm” are used to describe the first baby Ruth encounters (62). ❖ The aristocracy was believed to be the “best and ablest men” and “appointed by God” (English Chartist Circular 48).
Ruth: Rejecting the concept of Original Sin 2. Associating the infant with God ❖ Leonard is “God’s messenger to lead her back to Him” and his “reverence will shut out sin, - will be purification” (100). ❖ “Pure light of (Ruth’s) child’s presence” (102) ❖ Follows mid 19th- century trends where infants were seen to share an intimate relationship with God (Moore par. 1)
Vulnerable Infants in Unfavourable Domestic Environments
Bleak House: Sordid Setting ● “Broken windows” and “miserable little gardens” (129) ● “Growing nothing but stagnant pools” ● The unnamed man brutishly admits that he gave his wife “that black eye” (132). ● “If she says I didn’t, she’s a lie”
Bleak House: The Victims ● The infant is described as a “poor little gasping baby” (130). ● The mother “wished to separate any association with noise and violence and ill- treatment” from the infant by “cover(ing) her discoloured eye” (134) before looking at it.
Bleak House: Orphaned Infants ● Emma is identified as the “burden” (245). ● Charley takes Emma up in a “womanly sort of manner” (245) and conducting herself in a “motherly, womanly way” (247). ● The “air of age” was sitting “strangely on the childish figure” (246). ● Nelson argues that the display of age-inversion is a “forced maturity” due to the “thwarted development” of others (127) - In Karen Chase’s review of Nelson’s work
Ruth: Leonard’s Physical Weakness ● “Any very poor place would do” except “it must be clean, or (Leonard) might be ill” (143). ● Leonard as a “little dumb helpless” infant (144) ● Leonard would have “the croup” and “the typhus fever in no time, and be burnt to ashes after” (143).
Suggests that anyone is capable of caring and providing for Similarity infants The display of maternal traits Encouraging greater charity from figures which are not towards vulnerable lower class biological mothers and orphaned infants.
The Responsibility of Moral Guidance of Infants
Bleak House: Mother’s Fears ● Overwhelmed by the “many things that’ll come (the infant’s) way ● Repetition of trying “hard” with “no one to help” her (361). ● The drunk “sleepers on the ground” ● Her prediction that the infant will “be beat, and see (the mother) beat” by the father (361).
Bleak House: Contradictions ● “Much better to think of (the infant) dead than alive” (360). ● “Stand between (her infant) and death”. ● Overwhelming fear that she has of him being “turned bad” (361).
Bleak House: Motivated Mother ● She declares she would “work for (the infant) ever so much, and ever so hard” (361). ● Jenny reveals that the mother “loves (the infant) so dear” but does not “know how to say it” (361).
Dickens subverts commonly held beliefs that maternal influence was “all -powerful, determining the moral compass and habits of the adult to come”. (Regaignon 33)
Ruth: Ruth’s fears ● Ruth dreams that Leonard becomes a “repetition of his father” (136) ● Leonard is corrupted with “more than blood on his soul” and “dragged down” into some “pit of horrors” where he is “tormented in this flame” (137). ● Leonard described as “innocent babe” (136) and an “angel” who “was with God” (137)
Ruth: Ruth’s Hopes ● Prays for a “more complete wisdom” (137) ● Desires to protect a “new, pure, beautiful, innocent life” ● Motivated to “guard from every touch of corrupting sin by ever watchful and most tender care” (135).
Ruth: Implications on Illegitimacy ● Gaskell perceived maternity as “heightened consciousness sympathetic at its origin” and hence used it to route Ruth’s “redemptive entry into judgement” (129). -Amanda Anderson ● Counter-narrative to the widespread perception that women who participated in illegitimacy were depraved, “foul and loathsome creatures” (Cook 3:97).
Bleak House: Different Seemingly overwhelming corruption of an ● incorrigible society Tackles the role society plays in derailing an ● Effects infant’s moral development and the additional hardship it introduces into motherhood Source of the stress that the Ruth: mothers feel. Past trauma and her strong religious ● convictions Confronts existing prejudices about ● illegitimate women
Both contrast the purity of maternal love against the immorality in Victorian society - encouraging a close examination of the moral standards and conduct in Victorian society.
Infants as Quasi-religious Figures
“The Victorian age is in fact above all others an age of religious revival” (234) -T.H.S Escott
Bleak House: Perception of the Infant ● Esther regards the “little child” as coming in “the Eternal wisdom” (986). ● Its “errand” is to “bless and restore his mother” (986). ● Esther’s perception that the baby’s “power was mighty” to “heal (Ada’s) heart and raise up hope within her” (986)
Bleak House: The Infant’s Effects ● Esther’s remark that she “felt a new sense of the goodness and the tenderness of God” (986) ● Having “purified” and “given (Ada’s expression) a diviner quality” (988).
Ruth: Discrimination Against Illegitimacy ● Mrs Benson initially regards Ruth as “very depraved” and disapproved of the way she “took it just as if she had a right to have a baby” (99). ● Mrs Benson’s remark that Mr Benson’s “rejoicing over the birth of an illegitimate child” signalled a “questionable morality” (100) . ● Mrs Benson coldly regards the child as a “miserable offspring of sin” (101), Mr Benson portrays the infant as Ruth’s “redemption” (102) instead.
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