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

Charles Dickens - Bleak House (1853) Elizabeth Gaskell - Ruth (1853)

Why these texts?● Capturing the changes that gripped mid-nineteenth-century

British society.

● “Record(ed) details with realism” and their writing wassignificantly “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.

The use of sentimentalisationB

● The infant’s vulnerability● The susceptible morality of infants● Portraying them as quasi-religious

figures

Rejecting the concept of Original Sin

A

● Refute the idea of Original Sin differently○ Bleak House focuses on the infant’s

innate innocence ○ Ruth emphasises the infant’s godliness

● Enables subsequent sentimentalisation

Background:

The Victorian Era

Conflicting views on childhoodPuritanical concept of Original Sin

● All men are born into a state of sinfulness (Fisher 223)

● “Most widely held” and resulted in a “need to curb and control youthful high spirits” (1)

- Pamela Horn

The Romantic idea of childhood

● Originates in Rousseau’s proposal that each person was born as a blank slate (Brantlinger and Thesing 354)

● It intensified the innate innocence by portraying children as immature, playful and even angelic (Heywood 27).

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 foundanywhere” (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 theinfants’ innocence

❖ injuries and bruises are comically dismissed

❖ “perfect little calendars of distress” made as they“notched memoranda of their accidents in theirlegs" (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 theirreckless and uninhibited fun.

❖ “perfect little calendars of distress” made as they“notched memoranda of their accidents in theirlegs" (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 ablestmen” and “appointed by God” (English Chartist Circular48).

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

● “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: Sordid Setting

● 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: The Victims

● 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

Bleak House: Orphaned Infants

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 infants

Encouraging greater charity towards vulnerable lower class and orphaned infants.

Similarity

The display of maternal traits from figures which are not

biological mothers

The Responsibility of Moral Guidance of Infants

● 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: Mother’s Fears

● “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: Contradictions

● 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).

Bleak House: Motivated Mother

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:

● Seemingly overwhelming corruption of an incorrigible society

● Tackles the role society plays in derailing an infant’s moral development and the additional hardship it introduces into motherhood

Ruth:

● Past trauma and her strong religious convictions

● Confronts existing prejudices about illegitimate women

Different Effects

Source of the stress that the mothers feel.

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

● 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: Perception of the Infant

● 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).

Bleak House: The Infant’s Effects

● 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.

Ruth: Discrimination Against Illegitimacy

● The infant is said to be able to “make (Ruth) forget herself, and be thoughtful for another” (100).

● Mr Benson states that Ruth has “no right to sever the tie by which God has bound” her with Leonard (292).

Ruth: Redemption via Infant

● Mr Benson’s remark that “it is to God (Ruth has to) answer, not to men” (293).

● His tone strongly parallels biblical sentiments of hubris:

Warnings against acting in “the manner of the nations whom (men) carried away from (God)” (2 Kings 17.33).

Ruth: Commentary about Illegitimacy

Dickens:

An encouragement for greater involvement in child-rearing by emphasising the benefits that it brings to the mother’s wellbeing

Gaskell:

Utilises religious sentiments to expose social hypocrisy

Both show a positive effect on the mother herself-

Improving her mental wellbeing and providing motivation for them to carry out their maternal duties with greater conviction.

Amidst the demand for child-rearing guidebooks (Regaignon 33),

their novels constitute an alternative form of guidance for mothers and society at large.

Provides a unique relief to the hardships of child-rearing in Victorian society through their inspirational portrayals and the importance that they endow child-rearing with.

By reframing perceptions of social issues and infancy through sentimentalisation:

their novels effectively served as a moral guidebook which complemented the practical knowledge of child-rearing guidebooks.

Thank you.

Special thanks to: Dr Tamara Silvia Wagner and Ms Meenachi Rohini d/o Karuppiah