Commonplace 80 George & Post-Death Positivism. How Ethel Harrison Memorialised George. PART ONE
The Harrison family came into George's life when he took up Positivism, a philosophy that probably has had more impact on our current everyday lives than it ever did on the lives of George and his contemporaries, albeit to us in a subtle, even pernicious, sort of a way.
Following on from Darwin's work on Natural Selection, a whole new approach to fathoming the mind of the human animal was required. If we were all descended from ape-like critters (I'm simplifying) there was a need to make clear how we differed from our forebears - how else could humans maintain their dominance over the natural world if they had no understanding of how they managed to find themselves in the lucky position of running the show? Religion had lost its grip on the western mind and many feared society would collapse without a god as a moral compass. Science was expected to step in and offer rational explanations and schemas for how to organise and manage this new situation. What those in power feared most was the 'enemy within' - its own people rising up and overthrowing the status quo, leaving what might be termed 'civilization' or 'progress' in ruins.
From this state of fear, three specialisms emerged: psychology, sociology and anthropology (a fourth, eugenics, is now rightly viewed as a heinous pseudo-science - I will cover this in a future post). In order to accrue credibility, these three joined the ranks of the sciences, much as medicine had been forced to migrate from being the work of men with a love of all things dead and ready to cut up, to the pristine apartments of Harley Street and legitimate professional qualifications.
At least with a physical, anatomical living or dead body you have something tangible - with psychology and sociology, mostly all you have is hypothesis built on empirical observation. Positivism click rejects intuition and introspection, which must be a challenge for a Positivist psychotherapist, as much of what is known about human interaction is based on indefinable qualities that might be termed 'intuitive'. No-one can see inside the mind, or even give a definition of what constitutes a mind (or really understands how the brain functions), having acute intuition aids the work of the therapist. Much of what we take as fact in both disciplines is almost impossible to prove, and yet we hold both in high regard when it comes to legitimizing how a society moulds and controls its citizens, from constitutional matters to selling soap powder.
We certainly judge people and award them differing social values based on the rules of psychology and sociology, and are encouraged to focus on differences and not samenesses to apply a taxonomical checklist of what constitutes 'normal' This is a kind of 'divide and conquer' style of people management much favoured by the Greeks, the Romans and Machiavelli and it makes issues such as discrimination based on race, culture, sexual orientation and gender possible. The identification of 'women' as a sub-group - a problem group - came into sharp focus in the Victorian age when women were blamed for all manner of society's ills - the rise of venereal diseases associated with female (never male!) prostitution, for example, and the way this was dealt with click - shines a light on how women were classified as lower in worth and, as such, fair game as the eternal scapegoat. As most organised religion also tends toward this point of view, women have first place in the history of oppression. Still.
George's ideas about 'woman' are sometimes mistakenly seen as being in support of the cause of women's suffrage but anyone who has read any of his novels will soon suss that the reverse is true. He patronisingly conceded that women could be the equal of some men, but were unlikely to stay the course of that lofty situation. Like most men who are not as lucky in love as they would like to be, he blamed women for many of the things he found detestable in the human condition - his own failures of moral nerve, for example, were generally laid at the feet of whatever female he was with or wasn't with. When he didn't have a scapegoat to persecute.. I mean woman in his life... he pined for one, and prowled the streets looking for a victim - oops, wife. Whereas many of his written male characters are excused their foibles and faults, their shortcomings are never described as a failure in masculinity, George comes down hard on female characters and their struggle to find their way in the world, gender being their greatest weakness. Not that this is a predilection peculiar to George Gissing - many men blame women for their own inadequacies. Maybe it's because God is written as a male character who cunningly creates Eve as the ultimate fall gal, offering his own gender a free pass to wreak havoc and lord it over Creation.
Worries about who would run the home if women decided they would rather not marry or even dabble in relationships with men, worried many of those who put their energies into the debate. And, then, what if women turned their backs on traditional roles completely and rejected motherhood and its responsibilities? The Whirlpool's Harvey Rolfe might navel-gaze about it and harbour resentment towards his wife over it, but the simple fact remains: who else would do it? Women know most men just didn't want to do child-rearing - as George proved with his own children. Most men find it too difficult to pick up and bag their dog's poop off the pavement - how would they deal with an endless stream of nappies? But, imagine, for a moment, what sort of book it would be if Alma Frothingham had been a brilliant violinist and a willing mother. Could George have written about a gifted, successful, creative, fulfilled, happy woman? No - his competitive nature would not have allowed a woman to be everything he wasn't. Though, maybe buried deep within the 'irony' he claimed was in his novels and stories, perhaps he is Alma and is writing about his own pretentious talents?
Much of what George 'knew' about the cause of women's suffrage was gleaned from the pages of newspapers and periodicals - he did not study sociology any more deeply than did Dyce Lashmar in 'Our Friend the Charlatan', and had a very narrow gene pool of women with whom to discuss the issues. When he strolled about the ghetto, he wasn't really immersed in the rich culture of it - even in his early days he kept himself apart, and he did all he could to keep both Marianne aka Nell and Edith away from social groups they might have enjoyed. And, when he read about these new sciences (having stated that he had no 'feel' for science!), he critiqued the books to allow for the content that reinforced his personal prejudices, and dismissed what did not chime with his own personal world view. In this, he is exactly the sort of mind that sociology was born for!
Whereas he might not have said out loud 'a woman's place is in the home', his female characters generally end up, like the cast of a fairy tale who have strayed into danger, being taught the basic life lesson that we should stay home if we want to be safe. But women are rarely safe at home in a Gissing novel unless they are steeped in the enculturation of their times. In the case of women, this means we should not worry our weak heads about learning or self-actualising, or - heaven forfend!! - creating anything artistic, or being seduced into thinking we can do more than reproduce.
Mrs Ethel Harrison and her husband agreed. Her good works in the name of Positivism and the new 'science' of sociology - and via the mass media of what we now term 'print' journalism - came into sharp focus over the matter of the Women's Movement. And she dragged George's ghost into the debate.
Within the suffrage movement were two camps - the Suffragists and the Suffragettes. Basically, the former were meek and mild and took the long, slow route, prepared to wait around for men to offer them crumbs of democracy; the latter were terrorists, every bit as committed to their cause as only true freedom fighters can be. Before the class war there was the gender war - and neither conflicts have yet to be resolved. In George's day, of all the debates that arose from the new sciences, from social change, the fall out from the Industrial Revolution and so-called 'progress', it was the rise of the emancipated woman that was the most challenging to the established status quo. Britain as a world power was helter-skeltering to conflict and destruction, and the nation could not survive a bigger war on its home front.
There was, by no means, universal enthusiasm for female emancipation. By the beginning of the twentieth century, with George long in his grave, Mr and Mrs Frederic Harrison became spokespersons for the British Positivist view that women's suffrage was a dangerous, pernicious evil. Ethel took up the leadership role in the National League For Opposing Woman Suffrage click. This was a cross-class movement, but the predominantly middle class women who did most of the campaigning were not the worldly intellectual equals of those who campaigned for suffrage, who had been organised for many years and who were prepared to bomb buildings and sacrifice their lives to the cause. Ethel Harrison lobbied many of her personal contacts, but the project was doomed. This is from the BBC's entry for the Anti Suffrage Review publication click:
This is an Anti-Suffrage pamphlet (cost 1d), published by the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League which was founded on 21 July 1908 to oppose votes for women. There were branches all over the UK. Membership of the branches cost 1s to 5s and men were admitted as subscribing or affiliated members. The League gathered signatures on an anti-suffrage petition, and published the Anti-Suffrage Review from 1908 to 1918.
However they ran out of funds and were taken over by the Men's League for Opposing Woman Suffrage to form the National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage.
The pamphlet attacks the Suffragette movement and describes a demonstration at the Queens Hall on March 26th where speeches were made and ladies dressed in white, wearing carnations and the colours of the League, white rose and black, 'flitted about selling leaflets and literature'.
Attitudes towards women at the time are illustrated by comments about the sensitive nature of women making them unsuitable for political conflict, mens' work fetching a higher price because it was worth more, the grave danger to the Empire and womanhood of women having Parliamentary franchise.
Along the way, Ethel Harrison worked tirelessly for her cause. In one of her letters published in a newspaper, she invokes the name of George Gissing to reinforce her point.
 |
| from The Song of Songs by Eric Gill 1925 |
Following on from Darwin's work on Natural Selection, a whole new approach to fathoming the mind of the human animal was required. If we were all descended from ape-like critters (I'm simplifying) there was a need to make clear how we differed from our forebears - how else could humans maintain their dominance over the natural world if they had no understanding of how they managed to find themselves in the lucky position of running the show? Religion had lost its grip on the western mind and many feared society would collapse without a god as a moral compass. Science was expected to step in and offer rational explanations and schemas for how to organise and manage this new situation. What those in power feared most was the 'enemy within' - its own people rising up and overthrowing the status quo, leaving what might be termed 'civilization' or 'progress' in ruins.
 |
| Girl Playing With A Dog by Pierre Bonnard 1913 |
At least with a physical, anatomical living or dead body you have something tangible - with psychology and sociology, mostly all you have is hypothesis built on empirical observation. Positivism click rejects intuition and introspection, which must be a challenge for a Positivist psychotherapist, as much of what is known about human interaction is based on indefinable qualities that might be termed 'intuitive'. No-one can see inside the mind, or even give a definition of what constitutes a mind (or really understands how the brain functions), having acute intuition aids the work of the therapist. Much of what we take as fact in both disciplines is almost impossible to prove, and yet we hold both in high regard when it comes to legitimizing how a society moulds and controls its citizens, from constitutional matters to selling soap powder.
We certainly judge people and award them differing social values based on the rules of psychology and sociology, and are encouraged to focus on differences and not samenesses to apply a taxonomical checklist of what constitutes 'normal' This is a kind of 'divide and conquer' style of people management much favoured by the Greeks, the Romans and Machiavelli and it makes issues such as discrimination based on race, culture, sexual orientation and gender possible. The identification of 'women' as a sub-group - a problem group - came into sharp focus in the Victorian age when women were blamed for all manner of society's ills - the rise of venereal diseases associated with female (never male!) prostitution, for example, and the way this was dealt with click - shines a light on how women were classified as lower in worth and, as such, fair game as the eternal scapegoat. As most organised religion also tends toward this point of view, women have first place in the history of oppression. Still.
 |
| Bicycle National Gallery by Robert Rauschenberg 1991 |
Worries about who would run the home if women decided they would rather not marry or even dabble in relationships with men, worried many of those who put their energies into the debate. And, then, what if women turned their backs on traditional roles completely and rejected motherhood and its responsibilities? The Whirlpool's Harvey Rolfe might navel-gaze about it and harbour resentment towards his wife over it, but the simple fact remains: who else would do it? Women know most men just didn't want to do child-rearing - as George proved with his own children. Most men find it too difficult to pick up and bag their dog's poop off the pavement - how would they deal with an endless stream of nappies? But, imagine, for a moment, what sort of book it would be if Alma Frothingham had been a brilliant violinist and a willing mother. Could George have written about a gifted, successful, creative, fulfilled, happy woman? No - his competitive nature would not have allowed a woman to be everything he wasn't. Though, maybe buried deep within the 'irony' he claimed was in his novels and stories, perhaps he is Alma and is writing about his own pretentious talents?
 |
| Waiting At The Bar - Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt by Georges Bottini 1907 |
Whereas he might not have said out loud 'a woman's place is in the home', his female characters generally end up, like the cast of a fairy tale who have strayed into danger, being taught the basic life lesson that we should stay home if we want to be safe. But women are rarely safe at home in a Gissing novel unless they are steeped in the enculturation of their times. In the case of women, this means we should not worry our weak heads about learning or self-actualising, or - heaven forfend!! - creating anything artistic, or being seduced into thinking we can do more than reproduce.
Mrs Ethel Harrison and her husband agreed. Her good works in the name of Positivism and the new 'science' of sociology - and via the mass media of what we now term 'print' journalism - came into sharp focus over the matter of the Women's Movement. And she dragged George's ghost into the debate.
 |
| Anti Suffrage Propaganda from 1906 |
Within the suffrage movement were two camps - the Suffragists and the Suffragettes. Basically, the former were meek and mild and took the long, slow route, prepared to wait around for men to offer them crumbs of democracy; the latter were terrorists, every bit as committed to their cause as only true freedom fighters can be. Before the class war there was the gender war - and neither conflicts have yet to be resolved. In George's day, of all the debates that arose from the new sciences, from social change, the fall out from the Industrial Revolution and so-called 'progress', it was the rise of the emancipated woman that was the most challenging to the established status quo. Britain as a world power was helter-skeltering to conflict and destruction, and the nation could not survive a bigger war on its home front.
There was, by no means, universal enthusiasm for female emancipation. By the beginning of the twentieth century, with George long in his grave, Mr and Mrs Frederic Harrison became spokespersons for the British Positivist view that women's suffrage was a dangerous, pernicious evil. Ethel took up the leadership role in the National League For Opposing Woman Suffrage click. This was a cross-class movement, but the predominantly middle class women who did most of the campaigning were not the worldly intellectual equals of those who campaigned for suffrage, who had been organised for many years and who were prepared to bomb buildings and sacrifice their lives to the cause. Ethel Harrison lobbied many of her personal contacts, but the project was doomed. This is from the BBC's entry for the Anti Suffrage Review publication click:
This is an Anti-Suffrage pamphlet (cost 1d), published by the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League which was founded on 21 July 1908 to oppose votes for women. There were branches all over the UK. Membership of the branches cost 1s to 5s and men were admitted as subscribing or affiliated members. The League gathered signatures on an anti-suffrage petition, and published the Anti-Suffrage Review from 1908 to 1918.
However they ran out of funds and were taken over by the Men's League for Opposing Woman Suffrage to form the National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage.
The pamphlet attacks the Suffragette movement and describes a demonstration at the Queens Hall on March 26th where speeches were made and ladies dressed in white, wearing carnations and the colours of the League, white rose and black, 'flitted about selling leaflets and literature'.
Attitudes towards women at the time are illustrated by comments about the sensitive nature of women making them unsuitable for political conflict, mens' work fetching a higher price because it was worth more, the grave danger to the Empire and womanhood of women having Parliamentary franchise.
Along the way, Ethel Harrison worked tirelessly for her cause. In one of her letters published in a newspaper, she invokes the name of George Gissing to reinforce her point.
JOIN ME IN COMMONPLACE 81 TO READ THAT LETTER.
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