Gil, Marília Mendes Alves Martins

English

Universidade de Lisboa: Repositório.UL

ANGLO-SAXONICAISSN: 0873-0628 Série II  número 26Mona Caird’s gendered work: A go-between negotiating Past and FutureMarília Martins GilULICES - University of Lisbon Centre for English StudiesMona Caird’s gendered work: A go-betweennegotiating Past and Future“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there”(TGB, 7). This opening sentence from L.P. Hartley’s book(1953) presents us Leo, a learned old bachelor, who discoversthe diary he kept as a boy of 12. Besides not wanting “to touch it (...)” hesuddenly “took the combination lock and began to finger it” (TGB, 7).His decision awakes in his mind the events of a past time, too longforgotten, now being revived in the present. On doing it, Leo discloses theboy he was in 1900 and knows that what he experienced in that summercontributed to the kind of man he would be in the future/he is in thepresent. His role as a postman between Marian and Ted, made of him,firstly an innocent go-between, followed by a disillusioned boy, whodoesn´t want to accept that task from Marian again now that he is a grown-up: “And why should I go on this preposterous errand? I hadn´t promisedto and I wasn´t a child, to be ordered about” (TGB, 280).Actually, the Past and the Future are quite different or, in otherwords, they are antipodal. That is the information we can get from Leoand after looking up both words in the dictionary. The noun Past refers tosomething that happened in time before the Present or to a period “beforeand until, but not including, the present time” (CIDE, 1033). TheFuture, on the other hand, is ahead because “it has not yet come”, so “itis the time after the present” (DELC), 530). It can be “distant” or “near”,as we know. Summing up, the Past and the Future never meet becausetheir borders do not coexist with each other and they are not even next-door neighbours. Yet, something exists to approach the opposite extremes:the Present is standing there between them. According to the grammarrules, that is “the form of a verb that shows what exists or is happeningnow” (DELC, 1038). No doubt! Nevertheless, we should bear in mindthat there is a “historic/historical present”, which is “used in many languagesto describe events which happened in the past, when the teller wants tomake them sound more real” (DELC, 628). So, the Present adopts severalmeanings and it can also transform itself into a go-between that deliversmessages from one person to another or from one epoch to another. Thatis what Leo does when he says, “the past is” or “they do things differentlythere”.That was also the aptitude of Alice Mona Caird’s discourse duringher whole life. During the second half of the nineteenth century and theearly twentieth century, she put the Past and the Future in touch inmatters of gender. After unfolding past stereotypes she considered out ofage, Caird intended to leave them behind. Hers was an age of transfor -mations and, as Walter E. Houghton says, “it has been said that while theeighteenth century was satisfied with what it was, the nineteenth centurywas satisfied with what it was becoming” (TVFM, 38). Mona Caird wouldcertainly rectify this statement and instead of writing it that way she wouldprobably add that the “Victorian advanced women”are satisfied not withwhat they had become, but with what they should have become. It meansthat the present time she is living in is not so distant from the past but itis still distant from “a better and higher view of the state and its respons -abilities”, as she said in her interview to the Women’s Penny Paper (421)in 1890.Leo’s expectations for his near future were more optimistic till “the26th, the eve of the fateful Friday” (TGB, 32). Until that day he believedhumanity would be better immediately after the turning of the century.How could an innocent child imagine that some years later severalcountries were pointing towards a world war? How could he think thatsome days later his vision of the world would transform him into an adult,who would never again obey orders coming from Marian? After the 27th hewas able to read “between lines” or, in other words, messages. But till thatday his thoughts were quite normal for his age:The year 1900 had an almost mystical appeal for me; I couldhardly wait for it: ‘nineteen hundred, nineteen hundred,’ Iwould chant to myself in rapture; and as the old century drewto its close, I began to wonder whether I should live to see itssuccessor. I had an excuse for this: I had been ill and was282 REVISTA ANGLO-SAXONICAacquainted with the idea of death; but much more it was thefear of missing something infinitely precious – the dawn of aGolden Age. For that was what I believed the coming centurywould be: the realization, on the part of the whole world, ofthe hopes that I was entertaining for myself.(TGB, 9-10)On the contrary, Mona Caird’s maturity makes her less enthusiastic.The main reason for such distance in points of view (childhood-adulthood/past-future) has to do with her longer experience in relation tosocial communities where masculine and feminine persons are consideredto have different roles just because they were born boys or girls. Accordingto her, while those obsolete minds are not eradicated, boys will continueto have great opportunities ahead, not girls. Victorian education still putsgirls apart in several matters of public life. Adult boys do not have to submitthemselves to the attachment to household chores as women do. This factemerges from the limitations society imposes on them since time immemo -rial. Against this state of things, Caird uses her pulpit to denounce Past andPresent social inequalities and reveals herself a New Woman writer tryingto change public opinion. Besides being full aware that personal freedomand new social projects for women will not be implemented in a nearfuture, she believes transformation will certainly be possible some day, ina distant future, as she states: “I do not advocate any startling change atpresent (...) but because my idea may not be practicable at present it doesnot follow it will always be so” (WPP, 421).Caird’s feminine characters that do not follow their mothers’footsteps or their “nature” are accused of neglecting the conventional rulesfor their sex. The lady of Ballochcoill (Mr Duncan’s second wife), one ofthe characters of The Stones of Sacrifice (1915) is described as “a hand -some, rather mysterious-looking woman, with observant eyes, black hairdraw high above her brow, and a way of looking amused when thereseemed nothing particular to be amused at” (TSS, 4). Mona Caird’s ironyhere reflects how apart this woman is from the common views, how hersmile is a step ahead in time. And the narrator explains the reason why: “Atthat date, about ten years before the end of the nineteenth century, awoman of ability and independent views was looked upon with suspicionand more or less resentment in country districts; and Mrs Duncan had not283MONA CAIRD’S GENDERED WORK: A GO-BETWEEN NEGOTIATING PAST AND FUTUREescaped. There were rumours that her religious opinions were very“peculiar”, and that she had proved a harsh step-mother to youngDrummond, her husband’s only son by his former marriage” (TSS, 4). Buteven this woman, “who was not afraid of ideas” (TSS, 40), condemnsradical behaviour in girls such as Miss Kirkpatrick, whose masculineattitude in relation to dressing is described by the narrator, as follows: “Inappearance, miss Kirkpatrick was precisely what, at that date, the NewWoman was supposed to be: large and angular and masculine looking. Ablack skimpy coat and skirt, and a manly shirt and tie constituted her attire;and she had wrung her hair, by dint of virile force, into a tight button andpulled down on the top of the button a black bowler hat” (TSS, 39-40).This description reflects Caird’s criticism to the ardent public opiniontowards those women who deviated themselves from the Victorianstandard of behaviour: the submissive woman/wife whose “whole excuse forbeing was to love, honor, obey – and amuse – her lord and master, and tomanage his household and bring up his children. In that role her characterand her life were completely distinct from his” (TVFM, 348).Another character of the novel, Alpin McAlpin Dalrymple, is a boywhose emotions place him far from the common masculine ones, andbecause of that fact, he is easily criticised. His deviance from theconventional rules for men also attracts the others’ attention: he is “rathera handful” (TSS, 3), someone who “has a queer way with the beasties”(TSS, 49). He was not interested in being “a future banker” because hisimagination was “naturally vivid and inclined to melancholy” (TSS, 5).That was a characteristic of contemplative persons, not quite proper formasculine minds. To act as a woman/man means at first to gather infor -mation from the experts in such matters and to obey social construction orrules. Myra Jehlen in her article “Gender” (in CTLS, 268) refers to it andnames those social imposed manners as “conventional femininity”/[masculinity], which has standard parts”(268). But Alpin is more prone toobserve nature and to “admire the beastly country” where he can feedanimals out of his hand (TSS, 32; 4). When he was acquainted to theWelsh Professor Owen, who showed him the Standing Stones, he feltuncomfortable and disappointed with the past and with the world around.He will remember that place all along his life. It was a site of sacrifice andvictims, whose blood flowing from them on the altar-stone would284 REVISTA ANGLO-SAXONICApropitiate the gods of the druids. As Professor Owen explains, “the ideaappeared (...) in all religions: the belief that one could ward off from oneselfthe anger of the God by offering victims in one’s place. So long there wasa supply of victims, the Gods didn’t seem to be particular as to who theywere, provided they were of good quality. The best and fairest of the peoplewere chosen for these Druid rites, as in Greece the fairest maiden waschained to the rock for the Minotaur to devour” (TSS, 6). This approachto the Darwinian theory also reveals the epoch in which Caird was livingin. Science and medical experiments were being developed quickly. Thetheme of Vivisection and the suffering of animals for the sake of humanityis a recurrent theme in Alice Mona Caird’s work: compulsive obedience ofvictims to the most powerful ones. Her “advanced ideas” became toopolemical but as she said, “as a child I rebelled against current ideas”(TWPP, 421).The above arguments of inequality and injustice all over the worldat any time, are strongly reinforced by Professor Owen when he explainsAlpin that they are timeless and have no limits: “sacrifice goes on age afterage, though the Standing Stones are without their priests an flowingblood...” So, he adds: “whenever you hear anyone talk of sacrifice, nomatter in what refined disguise, you will know that you are back at thevery beginning of things” (TSS, 7).The act of speaking offers people the opportunity to communicateponts of view, as Professor owen did. The act of writing is quite useful toobecause it can present the other something said, done or thought not onlyin the past but also in the present. It can also spread its function to thefuture time making it possible for others to know or comment somethingthat happened back in time, sometimes with wide implications in thefuture, as it happened in Leo’s life. Barbara Johnson in her article “Writing”(CTLS) tells us that “writing can always pass into the hands of the “other”and it has a structure of authority” because “the possibility of readingmateriality, silence, space, and conflict within texts has opened upextremely productive ways of studying the politics of language (...). [So],“reading” in its extended sense is deeply involved in questions of authorityand power (...) [and] in this sense is the field of sexual politics” (48; 46).Mona Caird knows it and uses that same strategy that “goes beyondapparent intention or surface meanings” (“Writing”, 47). To encode it, that285MONA CAIRD’S GENDERED WORK: A GO-BETWEEN NEGOTIATING PAST AND FUTUREis the task of the reader. She is also acquainted with the idea that novels andtheir characters are timeless and because of that they can be read every timewith a different aim in mind: analyse landscapes, characters, points of view,etc. It depends on the purpose of each reader.Alpin is a good example of it. His meeting to Professor Owen wascrucial to his inner development, as the 27th of a past summer was to Leo.Leo learned about love and sex and Alpin learned about injustice,obedience, authority and power: on the stones he viewed “his mother (...)and all the women of the long, terrible sacrificial past. The docile maidenseemed a symbol of them all” (TSS, 29). Caird’s fin-de-siècle writing offersthe reading public the possibility of hearing her acute voice defendingpast/present victims of suffering: women and animals. She gives thus hercontemporary and future readers new insights into a society in trans -formation, which, as a consequence, was abounding in paradoxical ideasand attitudes. Conventional rules and “advanced” ideas both reflect thespirit of an epoch that was changing its mind in several areas. Regardingwomen’s issues, Caird enlarges the row that spreads hostility towards thosewho do not help to remove the obstacle placed in front of the femininegender. She is a “new woman” in revolt against the boredom of householdchores and in favour of equal rights, including the vote, as she stated in1890: “Of course I am ardently in favour of the vote for all women,irrespective of condition and circumstances. I am a Liberal in politics, andI would not shut women out from any profession or career in which itwere possible for them to succeed. Men and women should have equalrights in every respect, and the same laws should apply equally to both.What is wrong in the woman is wrong in the man; there should be no fearor favour. Until this be recognised there can be no real progress” (TWPP,421).Because of her ideas, Caird is/was labelled as a feminist. However,because the history of women was long forgotten, some of the first pioneerswho defended the reputation of women were absent of “history books” tillrecently, as Beatrice Gottlieb explains in her article entitled “The Problemof Feminism in the Fifteenth Century” (in TSWCP). But becausefeminism “is not easy to define in spite of its free use by its proponentsand attackers” (...) it is dangerous to assume that words carried the samemeaning in the sixteenth century as in the twentieth (...). As historians we286 REVISTA ANGLO-SAXONICAare prepared to find modes of thought in the fifteenth century that are nolonger with us” (TSWCP, 278; 277). With this explanation Gottlieb isconsciously aware that women’s arguments in favour of themselves “havechanged over the years”: the nineteenth century radical feminists claimedfor “equality of men and women and wanted to end what they regarded asthe demeaning restriction of women to the domestic sphere” (TSWCP,275). The visit of Alpin to the standing stones allowed him to understandhow society has separated both sexes and how difficult it has been forwomen to accept their silenced sacrifice. He reveals himself proud of notbeing a woman, as he states all along the action of The Stones of Sacrifice.Expressions such as “By Jove, it must be beastly to be a girl” are reinforcedwith the connivance of the narrator when she also says “By Jove, it washard luck to be born a woman” (TSS, 37; 89).In The Daughters of Danaus (1894), Caird examines the authorityof marriage contract which “controls women’s lives, especially the lives ofwomen with heart, talent and consciousness”, as it is referred on the backpage of The Feminist Press’s edition of 1989. Hadria, one of the maincharacters of the novel, confirms the voices referred above, when she says:“Renuntiation is always preached to girls, you know (...) preached to themwhen as yet they have nothing more than a rattle and a rag-doll torenounce. And later, when they set about the business of their life, andresign their liberty, their talents, their health, their opportunity, their beauty(if they have it), then people gradually fall away from the despoiled andobedient being, and flock round the still unchastened creature who retainswhat the gods have given her, and asks for more” (TDD, 63).Activists like Hadria do not all of them have the same objectives andexpectations for their future ahead. According to Gottlieb, “less radicalactivist women spoke not of equality but of women’s special qualities,qualities they believed could be recognized and used to benefit all of society.One curious feature of this history is that the demand for suffrage beganas an extremely radical issue and gradually became absorbed into theprogram of the non-radicals” (TSWCP, 275-276).But the defence of women by women did not see its movement startin the nineteenth century. In the fifteenth century Christine de Pizanstruggles against misogyny. The subject matter of her book The City of theLadies refutes slander and tries to demonstrate “the worth and talents of287MONA CAIRD’S GENDERED WORK: A GO-BETWEEN NEGOTIATING PAST AND FUTUREwomen (...) and [their] capacity for learning as men [do] (TSWCP, 278),as it is referred by Gottlieb. After reading The Lamentations of Maheolus(137os), De Pizan tries to answer the general accusations towards womenand explains:(...) the sight of this book, although it was of no authority,made me think along new lines which made me wonder aboutthe reasons why so many different men, learned and non-learned, have been and are so ready to say and write in theirtreatises so many evil and reproachful things about womenand their behavior. And not just one or two, and not justMatheolus, who has no particular reputation and writes in amocking manner, but more generally it seems that in alltreatises philosophers, poets, and orators, whose names itwould take too long to enumerate, all speak with the samemouth and all arrive at the same conclusion: that women’sways are inclined to and full of possible vices”.(TCL, in SWCP, 119)L.P. Hartley, Mona Caird and Christine de Pizan all have somethingin common: they all launched their own bridge to link Past and Future,in their Present time. All of them wrote about gender issues, however eachone stressing what they thought was relevant for their own life or epoch.When L.P. Hartley wrote in the Prologue of the cited book that “Leo knewthat the year must return to winter and begin again; but to [his]apprehensions the zodiacal company were subject to no such limitations:they soared in an ascending spiral towards infinity” (TGB, 9), he waswalking side by side with the title of this paper.ReferencesBlumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate (ed.). The Selected Writings of Christine de Pizan.New York: Norton, 1997.Caird, Alice Mona. The Daughters of Danaus (1894). New York: The FeministPress, 1989.–––. The Stones of Sacrifice. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent andCo. Ltd, 1915.288 REVISTA ANGLO-SAXONICACambridge International Dictionary of English. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1995.Dictionary of English Language and Culture. Harlow: Longman, 1992.Houghton, Walter E.. The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830-1870 (1957). NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1985.Hartley, L.P.. The Go-Between (1953). London: Penguin, 1988.Lentriechia, Frank e MacLaughlin, Thomas (eds.). Critical Terms for LiteraryStudy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990.Women’s Penny Paper. June 28, 1890.289MONA CAIRD’S GENDERED WORK: A GO-BETWEEN NEGOTIATING PAST AND FUTURE

Mona Caird’s gendered work: a go-between negotiating past and future

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