George Gissing: A Fan's Commonplace Blog

Commonplace 7   George & Women: The Never Ending Story.

Francois Boucher (1703-1770) provides the visuals - spectacularly!

Resting Girl by the divine Francois Boucher  1752 (the model was his wife).

Isn't it odd that George spent so much of his life thinking about women? Was it the sex imperative, or did he really delight in the company of the complementary sex the way Francois Boucher did? Sadly, neither. We know he didn't really respect women, or even want to spend more than the minimum amount of time with them - horizontal women were a need more than a want; romance did not come into the equation.

One of the challenges for women interested in George and his writings is the required coming to terms with his misogyny. Some of his male supporters feel empowered to dismiss our concerns by presenting flimsy arguments to the contrary, saying that George championed the emancipation of women, which is something he never did. Because he wrote about something does not mean he stood behind it. What he wanted was his version of emancipation - it is clear he never spoke to a woman about what she wanted. To George, a woman was a half-formed creature he could mould into an acceptable shape - I think this is why he opted to focus his amorous attentions on working and lower middle class girls until his luck ran out and he needed a nurse as much as a companion in Gabrielle. And, working class girls would accept him regardless of the situation with his health - he thought - because they would be grateful at having a husband with an income and some genteel ways


L'Amour Desarmes 1751
(He wants his phallic arrow back! Is she teasing him with her pinkie?)

Being a victim of his unfulfilled sexual needs must have been a curse for him - I don't think he wanted to reproduce, seeing children as the inevitable by-product of sexual congress rather than a delightful way to cement the bonds of a loving union. How much easier his life would have been if he had been asexual, or less guilty about masturbation (as all Victorians were) and not ashamed of syphilis!

My own theory is that his contempt for women started at his father's knee. If his parents enjoyed different attitudes to things like religion at a time when religion had a hold on the collective consciousness, the contest between faith and reason would have been at play. One cannot argue with faith, but one way to combat it is ridicule and I can imagine George's father seeking a comrade in arms in his first born to discuss how Mrs Gissing's strong religious conviction was a result of some inherent weakness in the feeble minds of all females, as much as a matter of strong conviction or belief. Certainly George says more of less the same thing about his sisters' religious views, saving his most critical comments for Madge who resisted his influence in a way Ellen did not.


Venus Playing with Two Doves c1754

So, perhaps George imbibed this prejudice against women from his father, often represented as being interested in the feminist cause, mainly, perhaps for his poem 'Margaret' about a working class girl who comes a cropper after she is exploited by a heartless seducer who leaves her all alone in the world. Hmm... where have I heard that before?

Thomas Gissing did not have the scope to act on his good intentions, but George took up the cause - in his own emotionally stunted, control-freaky way. For reasons that escape my powers of understanding, he saw himself as something of an expert on women - laughable when you consider how few he knew. But, George read a lot of books and most of these were written by men.... perhaps he thought this was more reliable evidence than that garnered from a hands-on encounter (!).
Having two younger sisters and a mother don't really qualify a teenager to become a social scientist specialising in feminist studies, but George was nothing if not confidant in his trick of grasping someone else's ideas and running with them, thanks to a massive over-estimation of his own abilities fostered by his success in academic pursuits. As an older brother of two sisters, one can only assume he had always felt superior, expected to be deferred to and entitled to be the arbiter of every thought word and deed of any woman lucky enough to come into his orbit: a little king with his bonded subjects. He saw his interest in the emancipation of women as much missionary work as social science experiment, and I can imagine the glee he experienced on finding Marianne Helen Harrison aka Nell as his living, breathing laboratory guinea pig, but she was valuable in quite another way - she would be a woman not put off by his acquired infection, because, being working class, she was bound to be familiar with it - as George no doubt assumed.

Leda and the Swan 1741

 Writing about the topic was not born out of fierce, burning political ideology, but the expedient of needing to write something that would sell. He despised journalism, but his books were always the product of a lot of research in newspapers and periodicals - which is an odd hypocrisy, is it not? The amount of newsprint the Gissing clan posted round the country is mind-boggling, so it is a bit rich to read his accounts of how vile he thought the task of writing for them - for a living! - would be to his tender sensibilities. It would be fair to state George probably knew more about women from the printed word than he ever did by face-to-face encounters.

Turning the spotlight on his own nearest and dearest was not exactly going to offer up the best subjects for a study of something momentous in political thinking. George was 6 when his sister Margaret was born, and 10 when Ellen joined them in their modest - though not small - accommodation, so he shared his early home life quite closely with three females (plus servants, of course). One a dominant, slightly scary presence (Edith); one morally upright, slightly repressed but refined (Gabrielle) and one a little peppy and more girly (Marianne).* Carl Jung was of the opinion our sexual preferences - for characteristics of life partner and other things - are laid down in our very earliest years, so we seek out familiar archetypes when we come to choose our mate, whatever our orientation.

*I mean of course, in this order: Mother, Madge and Nelly. I am not implying incest, I am illustrating archetypes!

Les Confidences Pastorales  c 1749

George's lifelong love affair with Schopenhauer (covered in Commonplace 4) probably gave a framework for his home-bred misogyny, but in a life of shifting ideas, influences and interests, he stuck pretty loyally to what was already a serious anti-woman attitude. Read the Letters volumes and Diaries, and you find very few entries saying anything positive about us. Even our physical appearance becomes dependent on his approval, yet even when he likes what he sees, it is not celebratory, but a cause for suspicion. It's as if he denies his natural instincts to be sexually aroused, fearing to feel anything he cannot control by his iron will. In one hilariously non-insightful moment he comments censoriously on the then current fashion for women wearing their necklines ever lower as being a worrying turn of events - whilst obviously finding these hints stimulating! 

He wrote this in a letter, apropos her education, to sister Ellen when she was 15: 'If you only could know how much of the wretchedness of humanity is occasioned by the folly, pig-headedness ignorance, incapacity of women you would rejoice to think of all these new opportunities for mental and moral training.' (February 3rd 1882).

Venus Sleeping c 1774

If George only could know how much of the wretchedness of humanity is occasioned by the violence, bigotry, and misogyny of men.

The cheeky monkey, himself

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                                                 For biography of Francois click