Commonplace 117 George & The Influence of John Ruskin PART THREE: Lilies part 2.
TODAY IN THE UK IS ADA LOVELACE (1815-1852) DAY - AND WE ARE LOOKING AT HIGHLIGHTS OF RUSKIN'S TAKE ON WOMEN'S EDUCATION.
So we have the second part of John Ruskin's lecture from the Lilies part of Sesame and Lilies of 1865, which is quite complex and often off education message, so I will pick out some gems. The full text of both lectures can be found here click
In the first part of Lilies, Ruskin focuses on the nobility of women, and the innate Home-making utilities we possess that help to support all the endeavours of men (some of us fall way below this ideal, Mr R!). But Ruskin, in both Sesame and Lilies was concentrating on the potential for educating people through reading, and Lilies was written with Ruskin's young muse Rose La Touche, in mind. Rose was a child, then young adult who was Ruskin's soul-mate and true love. He marked her down as marriage material when she was little more than a child - 'Lilies' was written to set her straight about her way in life.
Firstly, let's remind ourselves that George took the view that women are 'as intelligent as the average male idiot'. There is no flannelling out of this statement as he made it in a letter to his sister. So, it's difficult to know how much he took to heart what Ruskin said about teaching girls - we know George had female pupils (the Lushington girls, for example), but did he invoke the spirit of Ruskin when he tackled their lesson plans? How closely did he follow the 'Master'?
Ruskin starts this part of his lecture with a plea for women to become physically fit. In a time when females did not zestfully race about (think of George's short story Fleet-Footed Hester and how weird she seemed) partly because they did not have the costumes to make movement easy, and the fashion for corsets undermined all women's attempts to keep moving above a slow baby-step pace. Sport may have had its appropriate outfits, but underneath that would be a metal straitjacket of a corset. As Ruskin was particularly interested in making Rose La Touche his protégé, muse and prospective wife, and therefore robust enough to survive to young adulthood, this was a clear message to her to get out and exercise. Rose tended to anorexia and consumptive chic, so probably needed guidance on food and fresh air and all that sort of malarkey.
What else forms Ruskin's rules for a woman's education? Well, he said:
Do not think you can make a girl lovely if you do not make her happy. There is not one restraint you put on a good girl’s nature – there is not one check you give to her instincts of affection or of effort – which will not be indelibly written on her features, with a hardness which is all the more painful because it takes away the brightness from the eyes of innocence, and the charm from the brow of virtue. Now, this is sound in every way. but it's difficult to think George would give it much credence as far as Edith was concerned. But, Marianne aka Nell - did he lose heart in the struggle to support her poor health because he ran out of the ability to make her happy? Caring for an invalid is generally emotionally stressful and leads to feelings of inadequacy, especially when the patient's recovery becomes unlikely. Anger and resentment can creep in. However, as George was a fan of Charles Darwin, we can also assume he considered Nell inferior breeding stock, and so could not risk reproducing with her - and a woman/wife he couldn't have sex with was expendable. I don't for one minute think he ever wanted to reproduce, but it was a serious side-effect of a regular sexual relationship, in those days of ineffectual contraception. All the lies he told about Nell, and posterity's determination to carry on George's dirty work in maintaining the false position she is put under, may have originated in his shame at not being able to make her happy and keep her lovely.
So, we have to consider how George translated Ruskin's words and formed them into actions. When he tired of Marianne aka Nell, and grew resentful at her increasing ill-health, and her physical loveliness was perishing before his eyes, did he realise his character flaws and shortcomings would not be able to make her happy? Poor Edith was never going to be happy because of George and his own brand of what was the right way to behave or think or act, and that would always exclude spontaneous fun and socialising with normal people. Witness his (over-) reaction to seeing Demos enjoy itself on a bank holiday, or Edith allowing son Walter to listen to seaside pier show singers. Foreign Demos out on the streets having loud, garrulous fun with barrel organs and white cows, was acceptable to George's narrow definitions of approved hilarity - it was just Brits having fun George didn't like.
One area where Ruskin comes very clear is that a woman's learning must be functional and for the good of others: All such knowledge should be given her as may
enable her to understand, and even to aid, the work of men; and yet it should be
given, not as knowledge, - not as if it were, or could be, for her object to
know, but only to feel and to judge. Remember, he sees women as the arbiters of life's situations. It is of no moment …if she knows many languages or
one; but it is of the utmost, that she should be able to show kindness to a
stranger, and to understand the sweetness of a stranger’s tongue.
Ruskin does not seem to be addressing women in person in this lecture - he is speaking to men to teach them about how to develop women. When it comes to how deeply a woman's learning should go, Ruskin cautions against dabbling - a woman should not have a bit of knowledge about a subject because that just annoys men, who always have deep knowledge of their interests. However, as girls mature much earlier than boys, their education should start early - whilst boys can mess about until they are ready for taming to their books... While a woman ought to know the same language, or science,
only so far as may enable her to sympathise in her husband’s pleasures, and in
those of his best friends. This is hilarious when you think of how hard George worked at keeping his two wives from his best friends - Morley Roberts never met Nell, and no-one but the minions (Miss Collet and Miss Orme) met Edith. And hardly any of his friends and NONE of his family ever met Gabrielle, the one he considered his one true love and ideal woman until he was six feet under haha.
Up to now, Lilies seems workable and reasonable. But Ruskin tackles the thorny issue of women and the books they read, and things go a bit awry. Reading, remember, is his cornerstone of education, but women have a weakness for bad books and so we must be kept away from them. As the Divine Oscar said, there are no bad books, only books that are badly written (he said it so much betterer than what I just done) but, for Ruskin, a woman's fragile mind can be addled forever by exposure to the wrong sort of Eng Lit. Popular novels of the time were not advised by JR - though he doesn't name and shame any author in particular. He alludes to romances, murder mysteries - entertainment and diversionary reading for pleasure, which women so love. Filling up our female minds with dross and trivia is to be avoided - our fragile sense of reality will be permanently disfigured by the wrong sort of books. So, what are the right sort? Not Thackeray - and, presumably Gissing, judging by the list of things to avoid Ruskin gives us haha. And, not circulating Libraries which are the Devil's own antechamber to Hell. Then, there are romances - badly written ones are a dreadful thing but well-written ones are even worse! No doubt for all the ideas they give us about sex with lovers, and love and adventure and exciting, fulfilling, loving marriage and all those things girls look for in life.
Without, however, venturing here on any attempt at decision how
much novel reading should be allowed, let me at least clearly assert this, -
that whether novels, or poetry, or history be read, they should be chosen, not
for their freedom from evil, but for their possession of good. The chance and
scattered evil that may here and there haunt, or hide itself in, a powerful
book, never does any harm to a noble girl; but the emptiness of an author
oppresses her, and his amiable folly degrades her. And if she can have access
to a good library of old and classical books, there need be no choosing at all.
Keep the modern magazine and novel out of your girl’s way; turn her loose into
the old library every wet day, and let her alone. She will find what is good
for her; you cannot; for there is just this difference between the making of a
girl’s character and a boy’s – you may chisel a boy into shape, as you would a
rock, or hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you would a piece of
bronze. She grows as a flower does; - she will wither without sun; she will
decay in her sheath, as narcissus will, if you do not give her air enough; she
may fall, and defile her head in dust, if you leave her without help at some
moments of her life; but you cannot fetter her; she must take her own fair form
and way, if she take any, and in mind, as in body, must have always. Let her loose in the library, I say, as you do a fawn in a field. It knows the
bad weeds twenty times better than you; and the good ones too, and will eat some
bitter and prickly ones, good for it, which you had not the slightest thought
would have been so. Here click is a 'most borrowed' list from 2012-13. I have only read one of these titles myself - and it's not the one you might think! (I'm a Hilary Mantel fan.)
TODAY IN THE UK IS ADA LOVELACE (1815-1852) DAY - AND WE ARE LOOKING AT HIGHLIGHTS OF RUSKIN'S TAKE ON WOMEN'S EDUCATION.
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| Ada Lovelace in 1840 click |
So we have the second part of John Ruskin's lecture from the Lilies part of Sesame and Lilies of 1865, which is quite complex and often off education message, so I will pick out some gems. The full text of both lectures can be found here click
In the first part of Lilies, Ruskin focuses on the nobility of women, and the innate Home-making utilities we possess that help to support all the endeavours of men (some of us fall way below this ideal, Mr R!). But Ruskin, in both Sesame and Lilies was concentrating on the potential for educating people through reading, and Lilies was written with Ruskin's young muse Rose La Touche, in mind. Rose was a child, then young adult who was Ruskin's soul-mate and true love. He marked her down as marriage material when she was little more than a child - 'Lilies' was written to set her straight about her way in life.
Firstly, let's remind ourselves that George took the view that women are 'as intelligent as the average male idiot'. There is no flannelling out of this statement as he made it in a letter to his sister. So, it's difficult to know how much he took to heart what Ruskin said about teaching girls - we know George had female pupils (the Lushington girls, for example), but did he invoke the spirit of Ruskin when he tackled their lesson plans? How closely did he follow the 'Master'?
Ruskin starts this part of his lecture with a plea for women to become physically fit. In a time when females did not zestfully race about (think of George's short story Fleet-Footed Hester and how weird she seemed) partly because they did not have the costumes to make movement easy, and the fashion for corsets undermined all women's attempts to keep moving above a slow baby-step pace. Sport may have had its appropriate outfits, but underneath that would be a metal straitjacket of a corset. As Ruskin was particularly interested in making Rose La Touche his protégé, muse and prospective wife, and therefore robust enough to survive to young adulthood, this was a clear message to her to get out and exercise. Rose tended to anorexia and consumptive chic, so probably needed guidance on food and fresh air and all that sort of malarkey.
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| Elsa Lanchester and Boris Karloff in The Bride of Frankenstein 1935 click |
Ruskin invokes Wordsworth who termed this vigorous physical health
as the 'vital force' derived from wholesome activity - not that nasty opposite,
which is debilitating and enervating. The fashion for melancholic brooding
popular amongst young men of a poetic, aesthetic, artistic bent, becomes a
liability in a woman, because it is generally reduced to an aspect of hysteria.
Rose - take note.
What else forms Ruskin's rules for a woman's education? Well, he said:
Do not think you can make a girl lovely if you do not make her happy. There is not one restraint you put on a good girl’s nature – there is not one check you give to her instincts of affection or of effort – which will not be indelibly written on her features, with a hardness which is all the more painful because it takes away the brightness from the eyes of innocence, and the charm from the brow of virtue. Now, this is sound in every way. but it's difficult to think George would give it much credence as far as Edith was concerned. But, Marianne aka Nell - did he lose heart in the struggle to support her poor health because he ran out of the ability to make her happy? Caring for an invalid is generally emotionally stressful and leads to feelings of inadequacy, especially when the patient's recovery becomes unlikely. Anger and resentment can creep in. However, as George was a fan of Charles Darwin, we can also assume he considered Nell inferior breeding stock, and so could not risk reproducing with her - and a woman/wife he couldn't have sex with was expendable. I don't for one minute think he ever wanted to reproduce, but it was a serious side-effect of a regular sexual relationship, in those days of ineffectual contraception. All the lies he told about Nell, and posterity's determination to carry on George's dirty work in maintaining the false position she is put under, may have originated in his shame at not being able to make her happy and keep her lovely.
So, we have to consider how George translated Ruskin's words and formed them into actions. When he tired of Marianne aka Nell, and grew resentful at her increasing ill-health, and her physical loveliness was perishing before his eyes, did he realise his character flaws and shortcomings would not be able to make her happy? Poor Edith was never going to be happy because of George and his own brand of what was the right way to behave or think or act, and that would always exclude spontaneous fun and socialising with normal people. Witness his (over-) reaction to seeing Demos enjoy itself on a bank holiday, or Edith allowing son Walter to listen to seaside pier show singers. Foreign Demos out on the streets having loud, garrulous fun with barrel organs and white cows, was acceptable to George's narrow definitions of approved hilarity - it was just Brits having fun George didn't like.
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| Woman Reading With Parasol by Henri Mattise 1921 |
It is of no moment to her own worth or dignity that
she should be acquainted with this science or that; but it is of the highest
that she should be trained in habits of accurate thought; that she should
understand the meaning, the inevitableness, and the loveliness of natural laws;
and follow at least one path of scientific thought but only to better help her husband's studies. He carries on: It is of little consequence how many positions of
cities she knows, or how many dates of events, or names of celebrated persons –
it is not the object of education to turn her into a dictionary; but it is
deeply necessary that she should be taught to enter with her while personality
into the history she reads; to picture the passages of it vitally in her own bright
imagination.
However, there is one dangerous science for women –
one which they must indeed beware how they profanely touch – that of theology.
Strange, and miserably strange, that while they are modest enough to doubt their
powers, and pause at the threshold of sciences where every step is demonstrable
and sure, they will plunge headlong, and without one thought of incompetency,
into that science in which the greatest men have trembled, and the wisest
erred. This one we can assume George took on board. He argued with both his sisters about religion, and they both seem to give a good account of how they pitied him his lack of faith. Margaret must have been the stronger, as George gave up on her; Edith was more mutable, and, being his favourite, more likely to be the victim of his criticism.
However, what Ruskin seems to be hinting at here, in this dire warning, is - bearing in mind this is for the girl he wants to marry - that women (in his opinion) tend towards fanaticism when it comes to faith and can take the teachings of it too literally, to the extent this might interfere with their sex lives - or, their husbands' sex lives. Too much misreading of religion can put a girl off the animal qualities of sensuousness, mistaking it in their ignorance, for Sin - which is to be avoided, is it not? But, for Ruskin, marriage was an impossible dream - he never remarried after the disappointment of Effie Gray; when he wrote 'Lilies', he was not expecting to live for another 35 years, alone and presumably, sexless.
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| Rosie The Riveter by Norman Rockwell 1943 |
Up to now, Lilies seems workable and reasonable. But Ruskin tackles the thorny issue of women and the books they read, and things go a bit awry. Reading, remember, is his cornerstone of education, but women have a weakness for bad books and so we must be kept away from them. As the Divine Oscar said, there are no bad books, only books that are badly written (he said it so much betterer than what I just done) but, for Ruskin, a woman's fragile mind can be addled forever by exposure to the wrong sort of Eng Lit. Popular novels of the time were not advised by JR - though he doesn't name and shame any author in particular. He alludes to romances, murder mysteries - entertainment and diversionary reading for pleasure, which women so love. Filling up our female minds with dross and trivia is to be avoided - our fragile sense of reality will be permanently disfigured by the wrong sort of books. So, what are the right sort? Not Thackeray - and, presumably Gissing, judging by the list of things to avoid Ruskin gives us haha. And, not circulating Libraries which are the Devil's own antechamber to Hell. Then, there are romances - badly written ones are a dreadful thing but well-written ones are even worse! No doubt for all the ideas they give us about sex with lovers, and love and adventure and exciting, fulfilling, loving marriage and all those things girls look for in life.
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| Evening At Home by Edward John Poynter 1888 |
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| Crouching Fawn by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska 1913 |
And, so, where does this leave us? How much of what Ruskin proposes is his own projection, and his own sexual fantasy of Svengali-like master shaping ingénue, Trilby click? George certainly shared this male fantasy - both Nell and Edith were his own 'Brides of Frankenstein' creations that went wrong, but the allure of finding a blank canvas and then painting in the woman he wanted was intense. This is a peculiar male display of power, at a time when women had few options of resisting and the social focus was heavily on women conforming to men's desires. When the means of financial support are in the control of men, how could they resist George's assertions that they were inferior, and only he knew how to upgrade them. Arrogance was one of George's worst faults - and keeping his wives away from observers and those who knew as much as he did about social engineering - and so might have intervened to help Nell and Edith - guaranteed both women were defenceless and unable to resist. Education, eh? We don't need none.
FOR MORE ON WOMEN WRITERS' WORK:
FOR ANOTHER VIEW ON EDUCATION: click
FOR CONTROVERSIAL (NOT MY OWN) VIEWS ON WHY EDUCATION HAS DUMBED DOWN: click
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