5. To what extent and in what ways does Romantic writing engage with gender politics?

The study of Literature is inherently involved with a deconstruction of the complex and textured manner in which author’s attempt to express what it is to be human. To be human is a diverging experience between the sexes, both biological and socially, and consequently the extent of gender equitability within society has always been a prevalent and contended concern. An engagement with this contention will define gender politics for this essay. Jane Austen and Mary Shelley, writing at the beginning of the nineteenth-century, joined their female contemporaries in a growing generation of authoresses who forged careers in discipline of male authority. In this respect, they are inescapably engaging with gender politics. Margaret Kirkham comments that ‘this burgeoning of the female talent...was bound to have a profound effect upon any young woman beginning to write once it had occurred’, suggesting that, regardless of whether the female intended to represent female concerns within their work; a female, in becoming ‘an author, was, in itself, a feminist act’ (Kirkham 33). With the status of the authoress in mind whilst analysing Northanger Abbey and Frankenstein, this essay will focus how Austen and Shelley engage with gender politics through characterization and narrative form, and the female concerns they address, both implicitly and explicitly, throughout their texts.

Austen predominately engages with gender politics through her protagonist Catherine. Catherine is presented as the unlikely heroine; ‘no one...would have supposed her born to be a heroine’ (Austen 3). Austen subverts the expectation of an heroine as Catherine possesses ‘feelings rather natural than heroic’, provoking a reading of Catherine as a satire of the passive, unnatural, gothic heroine. When Catherine embarks for Northanger Abbey, she hopes for an experience ‘just like what one reads about’ (Austen 138). However, Catherine is left disillusioned; her stay absent of gothic excitement. Mary Oliphant comments that Austen makes ‘the innocent ridiculous’ (Austen 209) in a parody of the gothic heroine. This is a qualified reading, however, another reading can be drawn; it is not the fact Austen makes the ‘innocent’ Catherine ‘ridiculous’ but rather, it is the men of her novel which make her seem ‘ridiculous’. The male dialogue and actions signify not Austen’s own voice but those of her male contemporaries who were quick to discredit the female status; it is this which she wished to satirize.

There are two incidents where Catherine is silenced by men. The first, by John Thorpe who leaves ‘Catherine...agreeing...with all the civility and deference of the youthful female mind, fearful of hazarding an opinion of its own in opposition to that of a self-assured man and the reader’ (Austen 33). This initially invites the reader to perceive Catherine’s naivety against Oxford educated Thorpe. However, on reflection it is the force of Thorpe’s intellectual superiority which move Catherine to silence any intelligent comment she may have to rebuke him. On a further occasion, Henry turns conversation, as soon as Catherine seems ‘so hopeful a scholar’, to politics as ‘from politics, it was an easy step to silence’ (Austen 87). These are incidences where women are denied vocalization of any gumption or intuition they might possess. The injustice of this is most evident at the novel’s climax, with revelation that ‘the General had had nothing to accuse her of’ (Austen 193); Catherine’s instincts were correct. The protagonist’s intuition leads her to see beyond a matter which Captain Tilney, pertinently male, thought concealed. This undermines male hubris; it was ‘his pride [which he] could not pardon‘ (Austen 193). Austen leaves the extent to which Catherine is an heroine up to her ‘reader’s sagacity’ (Austen 195), however, through Catherine’s subjectivity to the silence of men and in proving herself more intelligent than Captain Tilney expects, Catherine can be read as Austen’s vehicle to glorify the intelligence of women, suppressed by the authority of men.

Frankenstein follows with the absence or passivity of women set against the intellectual ambition of man. Where Shelley presents women, they serve for a purpose. This purpose, as Stephanie Haddad puts it, is ‘to serve a very specific function and impact a man’s life’ (Haddad). Drawing on examples from the novel, Elizabeth and Justine are described as ‘the beautiful and adored companion’ (Shelley 24) and a ‘most grateful little creature’ (Shelley 53), respectively. Describing Justine as a creature reflects passivity and a self-effacing view of women. These women, in turn, take the blame for the actions of men; Elizabeth, after William’s murder, ‘weeps continually and accuses herself unjustly as the cause of his death’ (Shelley 61) whilst Justine ‘do[es] not pretend that...[her] protestations should acquit [her]’ (Shelley 69). Women, where present, serve to embody unrealistic perfection reduced to objects for revenge. This engagement with gender politics, although subtle can be read as a means to ‘specifically portray the consequences of a social construction of gender which values men over women.’ Shelley’s society ‘is founded on a rigid division of sex-roles: the man inhabits the public sphere, the woman is relegated to the private or domestic sphere’ (Mellor 116). Reflecting upon Mellor, Shelley deliberately excludes women from the central narrative body and reduces her female characters to minor roles within the domestic sphere, to draw upon the consequences of neglecting the female role; seen through Frankenstein’s downfall as a result of his hubristic attempt to usurp the female role; linking directly to Shelley’s status as a female writer in the public sphere.

This corresponds to Northanger Abbey, in which, as Claudia Johnson asserts, ‘Austen proclaims the dignity of her genre as well as the authority of her own command’. Austen ‘proclaims the dignity of her genre’ (as a female author), by disproving Henry’s statement that ‘the usual style of letter-writing among women is faultless, except in three particular ways’ : ‘a general deficiency of subject, a total inattention to stops, and a very frequent ignorance of grammar’. Through a dextrously crafted conversation, Austen presents the male belief, as outlined by Richardson, ‘that a young lady should be in love, and the love of the young gentleman undeclared, is an heterodoxy which prudence, and even policy, must not allow’ (Johnson), as ridiculous. The absurdity of male attempt to govern the ‘proper’ way in which women should fall in love, is constructed by showing the futility of dictating Catherine’s feelings, which are linked to her imagination, her ‘dream[s] (Austen 16); a boundless quantity which cannot be controlled, nor suppressed by men. This point is reflected on further when Catherine’s mother perceives that her daughter is ‘fretting about General Tilney’. Austen shows a female understanding of a females mind, reflecting her own understanding of her sex. In a demonstration of grammatical understanding and ‘attention to stops’, shown in Henry’s correctly punctuated speech, Austen proceeds from this early conversation in this manner to contradict Henry. In this way, Austen proves the‘dignity of her genre’, implicitly satirising Henry’s perception of the authoress and his intellectual hubris.

Similarly, Shelley exploits the downfall met by Frankenstein, showing the consequences of usurping the female role of creating life; a maternal process reserved for women. A connection between nature and the female is weaved into the narrative which, Mellor comments, ‘shows the penalties of raping nature but also celebrates nature and in doing so celebrates women’. Looking at the sublime Alpine landscape, Shelley presents nature as female, rich in imagery of ‘omnipotent fertility beyond the control of man’ (Mellor 221). Frankenstein describes ‘the beautiful Mont Blanc, and the assemblage of snowy mountains that in vain endeavor to emulate her’, evoking a vision of Mount Blanc as a mother figure with the other mountains her offspring. This far-reaching, mountainous imagery mirrors Frankenstein’s immense ambition. Furthermore, Nature appears in correlation to Frankenstein’s sentiment. When miserable, ‘dark melancholy clouded every thought’ (Shelley 84). When delighted by his ‘nuptial embarkation’, the ‘beautiful Mount Blanc’ serves as a backdrop to frame his ‘last moments of...[his] life during which..[he] enjoyed the feeling of happiness’. Sublime nature represents the union of Frankenstein and his beloved Elizabeth; implicitly suggesting the harmonious relationship between nature and women. In usurping the female role; in transgressing against nature, Frankenstein is denied a married life with Elizabeth. Consequently, the imagery of nature in the novel shifts to darkness, with the ‘spirits of the departed seem[ing] to flit around and to cast a shadow’ (Shelley 182) on the rest of Frankenstein’s life.

In undermining Henry, who exerts himself as an authoritative male, Austen is proving ‘the authority of her own command’. Henry states, there being ‘a general deficiency of subject’ in authoress’ genre which, in fact, highlights Henry’s deficient ability to comprehend the depth of the authoress’ capability, as Austen’s novel can be proved sufficient in subject. When the book was reviewed anonymously in 1818, a critic censured that ‘in imagination...she appears to have been extremely deficient; not only her stories are utterly and entirely devoid of invention..She seems to be describing such people as meet together each night’ (Austen 209). This reflects a perfunctory reading of Austen, in which the ‘tenor of...life in Bath’, ‘The civilities and compliments of everyday’, and ‘various dressed to be remembered’ (Austen 14) shown in the quotidian activities and conversation of Catherine’s visit to bath, are seen as an adequate summary of the novel. However, this is only the frame of Northanger Abbey; the frame which allows a complex argument such as this to synthesize into a satirization of male figures who discredited the ability of female writers and attempted to govern the way women fell in love. The fact Tilney only sees the fantastical semblance of female writers, which he perceives to lack consequential meaning, reduces the exact intellectual superiority he exerts such opinions with and disproves critical claims that Austen was merely ‘an homely songbird, unconscious of her art’ (Johnston 4). Austen’s shows men as ‘not...always superior in his judgements’ (Kirkham.88). In doing so, Austen consciously addresses male prejudice towards the authoress, a female concern, operating beneath the veil of a frivolous, Bath society.

Frankenstein exemplifies a male ‘not...always superior in his judgements’, as his hubris allows him to misjudge his ability to usurp nature and the female role. Shelley sets up a stark contrast between the narrative of Frankenstein and the passivity of women, to show the tyranny of man against nature. Although men dominate, the text is deeply concerned with female concerns. In a series of narrative pregnancies which fold out from one another, at the source is Mary Saville, a female. Regarding the initials of ‘M’ and ‘S’, those of Mary Shelley, the reader is implicitly reminded that a female is at the heart of this male weighted account. The autobiographical element of the Shelley’s work continues generating a reading that Frankenstein’s hysteria of ‘breathless horror and disgust [which] filled... [his] heart’ (Shelley 86), after he creates the monster,reflects the trauma of post-natal depression. Sussman comments, Shelley was ‘not a secure mother’ and notes how the novel is not focused upon ‘what precedes birth, not upon birth itself, but upon what follows birth: the trauma of the afterbirth’ (Sussman 81). In this respect, Shelley ‘had indeed written as a woman, about women’s concern’ (Sussman 164), which encourages the reading that Frankenstein, although capable of a purely gothic reading, is deeply concerned with female creation and, in this respect, the importance and relevance of the authoress to vocalize female concerns in the public sphere. QUOTE

In conclusion, Austen and Shelley can be seen to significantly engage with gender politics, not only in their status as authoresses but in the way they vocalize female concerns. An interesting parallel can be drawn between the texts; Catherine’s view of history ‘with men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all’ (Austen 85), reflects the male dominance of Shelley’s narrative. Both writers, highlight the importance of women. Shelley shows the grave consequences for Frankenstein in usurping the female role, and equally presents a male psyche in ‘a hell of intense tortures’, which suggests that the wild imagination of the gothic heroine is not exclusively reserved to women. In a similar way, Henry is enlightened by the ‘natural rather than heroic’ qualities possessed by Catherine as he is described to ‘blush... for the narrow- minded counsel which he was obliged to expose’ at the novel’s end. Furthermore, Henry needs Catherine to be an hero as much as she needs him to be an heroine, as her naivety serves to be an attractive quality which facilitates Henry to seem intellectually superior and act as an enlightening hero. Mary Poovey comments upon the strategies that enabled women either to conceive themselves... to express themselves in a code capable of being read in two ways: an acquiescence to the norm and as a departure from it (Austen 207). These ‘strategies’ are shown by Shelley and Austen through characterization, narrative arrangement and most crucially the levels of meaning which operate to allow a basic, entertaining reading to come through their texts whilst simultaneously, implicitly engaging with the broader, contemporary gender politics which concerned their sex.

Bibliography

Austen, Jane, Northanger Abbey (London: Orion Publishing Group, 1996)

Gerster, Carole, Rereading Jane Austen: Dialogic Feminism in Northanger Abbey in A Companion to Jane Austen Studies (London: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000) pp. 115- 130

Johnson, Samuel, in Number 97, Tuesday, February 19, 1751 of The Rambler (Longman, 1793) pp. 252-59

Johnston, Claudia, Jane Austen: Women, Politics and the Novel (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1988)

Keller, James R. Austen’s Northanger Abbey: A Bibliographic Study in A Companion to Jane Austen Studies (London: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000) pp. 131

Kirkham, Margaret, Jane Austen: Feminism and Fiction (Brighton: Harvester, 1983)

Mellor, Anne K, Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters (New York: Methuen, 1988), pp. 115-26

Poovey, Mary, The Proper Lady and the Woman Write: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984)

Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein, (London: Harper Press, 2010)

Websites

Sussman, Charlotte, Daughter of the Revolution: Mary Shelley in Our Times in Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1, Women Writers of the Eighteenth Century (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, Spring/Summer 2004), pp. 158-186
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27793781 accessed: 17/11/13