Commonplace 160 George & Children PART TWO
From the miserable Dickensian early start of a poor unloved waif, through to the neglect foisted on offspring by indifferent parenting, children fare no better than adults in any Gissing outing. Not only are their lives designated as miserable, unhappy and futile when they are small, all will end up disillusioned, unfulfilled and wasted in their adult lives because of early setbacks. Even when he had children of his own - particularly when he had children of his own! - George failed to recognise that he was the least suited to either father children or influence their upbringing. Being too selfish, emotionally constipated, misanthropic and pessimistic to offer a small person a decent role model of happiness and what we now term 'centredness', strangely, George considered himself a student of child psychology.
Was it the learned hard-heartedness of the disappointed person whose life had been a series of self-inflicted disasters, or an innate lack of emotional intelligence that rendered George incapable of identifying with his own children? After all, it doesn't take a genius to work out those things that make an adult unhappy are likely to have an even deeper impact on a developing mind. What made him miserable as a child could make any child, at any time, anywhere, equally as sad. But, empathy was never George's strong suit. Let's take a look at a few of his literary child victims.
Arthur Golding in Workers In The Dawn.
If ever the spectre of Charles Dickens reared up as the Ghost of Childhood Past in George's canon, it is with young Arthur. Of course, Dickens was walking the walk - he had been on the receiving end of genuine poverty as a child, and the experience of the blacking factory with its bullying, deprivation and loneliness informed many of his characters and stories. George had never lived through such hardship, and so through Arthur Golding, all of his early love of Dickens (which rapidly left him when he was a grown up) poured out in what is clichéd, sentimental but ultimately banal. If Monty Python had been writing a book about Victorian orphans, they would have invented Arthur click. For starters, he makes his début in a squalid garret rugged and sloped from one side down to the other (rugged as in having an uneven surface, or was it covered in rugs??) found sleeping next to his dying father by Edward Norman, an old friend of the sick man. Naturally, he is an angel of a child not at all marked by the vicious surroundings - a quick 'lick and a promise' (as my old mother used to say) and he will clean up nicely. Please see Commonplace 156 and the sad tale of Billy Burden for more of the same. When Arthur is finally left fatherless (his whorish mother is already gone), he clings to the corpse with all the determination of a small Scottish terrier click.
Fast forward a few months and the wee lad, after a social experiment phase that backfired when he was semi-adopted by Norman (a man who owns an exquisite little copy of Horace, so we know he is a typical George superior male), is up to his arm pits in classic Victorian slum fiction world - bullied, exploited, unclean, unloved and on the brink of becoming the new Artful Dodger. But he rises above - of course, he is your actual natural aristocrat. What are the chances of that in a novel written by a chap who considered his own humble origins as a freakish error of lineage, as if the stork had dropped him off at the wrong residence? On the plus side, Arthur is as gentle as a girl. Not sure George realised how that would scan. Arthur rejects the financial and social advantages Norman offers and sets off on his own voyage of self-discovery back in the streets of his birth.
If all this sounds preposterous and silly, we must recall the intrinsic harm this trite, over-long book has done in cementing the George Gissing myth that he was a superior sort of chap dragged down by associating with inferior women. Many of the claims made by biographers that they know who George was - and know his first wife, too - are based on Arthur's father and Arthur, himself, and the deplorable portrayal of women in this book. You would have to be a real dufus to fall for it, but they do! It may well have been the myth George wants us to believe, but that doesn't make it true.
Hughie Rolfe in The Whirlpool
Poor Hughie. Brought into the novel to help George explain how he will someday abandon his own child, Walter, whilst putting the blame for that onto the boy's mother. Hughie's father, Harvey Rolfe, one of George's vilest creations, in an unlikely conversation of indelicate intimacy with the odious Ms Abbott, a self-proclaimed governess/educator (and not at all like his sexy wife, Alma) offers the chance for George to justify his own heartless actions whilst appearing to be an appreciator of the put upon, low born woman. In conversation these two:
...spoke of the people who were so anxious to be relieved of their children.
'One lady wrote to me that she would pay almost anything if I would take her little boy and keep him all year round; she only has a small house, and the child utterly upsets her life.' Says Ms Abbott.
This was published in 1893, when George was unhappily married to Edith and young Walter was a toddler. Already, the seeds of the boy's downfall were being sown; George didn't carry his plan out until he had worn down his second wife and she was in no position to complain, but George it seems always planned to take Walter away from her and send him to his two spinster sisters and child abusing mother in Wakefield. Because it is clear from the way he wrote about Walter in his Diaries that the boy very much 'upset' his father's life. Poor Hughie is seen to be a victim of a mother's neglect, and eventually dies. This is what is termed an 'Easter egg' in modern parlance when films and their trailers contain hints as to future productions, especially for cinematic universe renditions of superhero comics. Such as this click. Harvey, the boy's father is absolved of his neglect but of course, Alma, the alleged bad mother, has to be punished. It's what the Greeks would have wanted haha.
The eponymous Whirlpool is Modern Life (1897-stylee) with its social demands and capitalist fancies, and the whole world conspiring to keep a man from his Homer. Did George live in a Whirlpool? Not judging by the endless moaning he did about a lack of social life, if we are to delve into the Diaries and Letters. But, if George's life was a Whirlpool, then mine is a veritable Charybdis - no doubt George got his title/concept from the Greek legend click.
The Madden Sisters in The Odd Women.
Six girls whose mother is already dead (Mrs Madden, having given birth to six daughters had fulfilled her function in this wonderful world). Father intends to insure his life for £1K in order to provide for them, but suffers what will be a fatal RTA the day before he sets this plan in motion. The fickle finger of fate once more enters into George's realm. He nails his colours to the mast in the opening chapter when old Madden says: ...nothing upsets me more than those poor homes where wife and children are obliged to talk from morning to night of how the sorry earnings should be laid out. No, no; women, old or young, should never have to think about money... George claimed to be making use of irony (when he was schmoozing Gabrielle Fleury and she queried his misogyny) in his writing and so we can assume, here, he is not referring to his first wife's death in poverty brought on by his meagre alimony payments! That would require a level of insight George did not possess. He writes on: Human beings are not destined to struggle for ever like beasts of prey. 'Beasts of prey'?? Doesn't he mean 'beasts of burden'? Or does he mean prey in general as in a lion's dinner?? Maybe his version is some lost to us Victorian phrase - but I doubt it.
So, these orphans are left with £800, a little over £7K in today's money. If a single word could sum them up in their childhood, it would be 'mediocre'. Nothing beautiful about them - looks and charm being bankable skills - with the exception of baby Monica. Which we can predict will be punished and ruined over the course of the book - every temptress gets a whacking in a Gissing outing (Alma in The Whirlpool?? So, guess what becomes of Monica?). She might be the salvation of the group if she can marry well, which means finding a man with money. That is held against her when she chooses it. But, as a baby, she is just a liability; another mouth to feed. Only Alice, the eldest, reared to be their surrogate mother, is strong-minded enough to pull it all together and get them through.
We are never told how their childhoods unfurled, but we can guess the girls were raised by women not unlike Ms Abbott from The Whirlpool - unsuited to the task, indifferent to the outcome, but in need of the money. Not unlike the Gissing sisters. The Maddens set out as young adults to make a living in a world not set up to accommodate single girls. Monica's marriage - doesn't Widdowson treat her the way George treated Edith? By reminding her he was the one with the power because he had the money, and that she should know 'which side of her bread is buttered' - as George did to Edith? Of all George's novels, The Odd Women is his most contentious and open to interpretation. I am always amazed when it is seen as a novel about the emancipation of women when all I read is George's misogyny, unchained. He sees women as their own worst enemies, and it is innate weakness of mind that leads to their downfall. Did he ever stop to ask what is the fundamental aspect of the debate: exactly what will men get out of women's emancipation? A loss of power would be inevitable if women worldwide were ever truly emancipated, so why would men ever want to relinquish the upper hand to a tribe of competitors? Does George expect women to be more like men in order to fit into a man's world? Until women are freed of sex slave status and incubators to children, we will never be equal. And, when we are free of our sexual functions and gynaecological entrapments, men will kill us as superfluous to their needs and because we pose a threat to diminishing natural resources. But that's another post!
From the miserable Dickensian early start of a poor unloved waif, through to the neglect foisted on offspring by indifferent parenting, children fare no better than adults in any Gissing outing. Not only are their lives designated as miserable, unhappy and futile when they are small, all will end up disillusioned, unfulfilled and wasted in their adult lives because of early setbacks. Even when he had children of his own - particularly when he had children of his own! - George failed to recognise that he was the least suited to either father children or influence their upbringing. Being too selfish, emotionally constipated, misanthropic and pessimistic to offer a small person a decent role model of happiness and what we now term 'centredness', strangely, George considered himself a student of child psychology.
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| Madonna and Child by Pietro Torrigiano c 1525 |
Arthur Golding in Workers In The Dawn.
If ever the spectre of Charles Dickens reared up as the Ghost of Childhood Past in George's canon, it is with young Arthur. Of course, Dickens was walking the walk - he had been on the receiving end of genuine poverty as a child, and the experience of the blacking factory with its bullying, deprivation and loneliness informed many of his characters and stories. George had never lived through such hardship, and so through Arthur Golding, all of his early love of Dickens (which rapidly left him when he was a grown up) poured out in what is clichéd, sentimental but ultimately banal. If Monty Python had been writing a book about Victorian orphans, they would have invented Arthur click. For starters, he makes his début in a squalid garret rugged and sloped from one side down to the other (rugged as in having an uneven surface, or was it covered in rugs??) found sleeping next to his dying father by Edward Norman, an old friend of the sick man. Naturally, he is an angel of a child not at all marked by the vicious surroundings - a quick 'lick and a promise' (as my old mother used to say) and he will clean up nicely. Please see Commonplace 156 and the sad tale of Billy Burden for more of the same. When Arthur is finally left fatherless (his whorish mother is already gone), he clings to the corpse with all the determination of a small Scottish terrier click.
If all this sounds preposterous and silly, we must recall the intrinsic harm this trite, over-long book has done in cementing the George Gissing myth that he was a superior sort of chap dragged down by associating with inferior women. Many of the claims made by biographers that they know who George was - and know his first wife, too - are based on Arthur's father and Arthur, himself, and the deplorable portrayal of women in this book. You would have to be a real dufus to fall for it, but they do! It may well have been the myth George wants us to believe, but that doesn't make it true.
Hughie Rolfe in The Whirlpool
Poor Hughie. Brought into the novel to help George explain how he will someday abandon his own child, Walter, whilst putting the blame for that onto the boy's mother. Hughie's father, Harvey Rolfe, one of George's vilest creations, in an unlikely conversation of indelicate intimacy with the odious Ms Abbott, a self-proclaimed governess/educator (and not at all like his sexy wife, Alma) offers the chance for George to justify his own heartless actions whilst appearing to be an appreciator of the put upon, low born woman. In conversation these two:
...spoke of the people who were so anxious to be relieved of their children.
'One lady wrote to me that she would pay almost anything if I would take her little boy and keep him all year round; she only has a small house, and the child utterly upsets her life.' Says Ms Abbott.
This was published in 1893, when George was unhappily married to Edith and young Walter was a toddler. Already, the seeds of the boy's downfall were being sown; George didn't carry his plan out until he had worn down his second wife and she was in no position to complain, but George it seems always planned to take Walter away from her and send him to his two spinster sisters and child abusing mother in Wakefield. Because it is clear from the way he wrote about Walter in his Diaries that the boy very much 'upset' his father's life. Poor Hughie is seen to be a victim of a mother's neglect, and eventually dies. This is what is termed an 'Easter egg' in modern parlance when films and their trailers contain hints as to future productions, especially for cinematic universe renditions of superhero comics. Such as this click. Harvey, the boy's father is absolved of his neglect but of course, Alma, the alleged bad mother, has to be punished. It's what the Greeks would have wanted haha.
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| Identical Twins by Diane Arbus 1967 |
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| George's ideal holiday |
Six girls whose mother is already dead (Mrs Madden, having given birth to six daughters had fulfilled her function in this wonderful world). Father intends to insure his life for £1K in order to provide for them, but suffers what will be a fatal RTA the day before he sets this plan in motion. The fickle finger of fate once more enters into George's realm. He nails his colours to the mast in the opening chapter when old Madden says: ...nothing upsets me more than those poor homes where wife and children are obliged to talk from morning to night of how the sorry earnings should be laid out. No, no; women, old or young, should never have to think about money... George claimed to be making use of irony (when he was schmoozing Gabrielle Fleury and she queried his misogyny) in his writing and so we can assume, here, he is not referring to his first wife's death in poverty brought on by his meagre alimony payments! That would require a level of insight George did not possess. He writes on: Human beings are not destined to struggle for ever like beasts of prey. 'Beasts of prey'?? Doesn't he mean 'beasts of burden'? Or does he mean prey in general as in a lion's dinner?? Maybe his version is some lost to us Victorian phrase - but I doubt it.
So, these orphans are left with £800, a little over £7K in today's money. If a single word could sum them up in their childhood, it would be 'mediocre'. Nothing beautiful about them - looks and charm being bankable skills - with the exception of baby Monica. Which we can predict will be punished and ruined over the course of the book - every temptress gets a whacking in a Gissing outing (Alma in The Whirlpool?? So, guess what becomes of Monica?). She might be the salvation of the group if she can marry well, which means finding a man with money. That is held against her when she chooses it. But, as a baby, she is just a liability; another mouth to feed. Only Alice, the eldest, reared to be their surrogate mother, is strong-minded enough to pull it all together and get them through.
We are never told how their childhoods unfurled, but we can guess the girls were raised by women not unlike Ms Abbott from The Whirlpool - unsuited to the task, indifferent to the outcome, but in need of the money. Not unlike the Gissing sisters. The Maddens set out as young adults to make a living in a world not set up to accommodate single girls. Monica's marriage - doesn't Widdowson treat her the way George treated Edith? By reminding her he was the one with the power because he had the money, and that she should know 'which side of her bread is buttered' - as George did to Edith? Of all George's novels, The Odd Women is his most contentious and open to interpretation. I am always amazed when it is seen as a novel about the emancipation of women when all I read is George's misogyny, unchained. He sees women as their own worst enemies, and it is innate weakness of mind that leads to their downfall. Did he ever stop to ask what is the fundamental aspect of the debate: exactly what will men get out of women's emancipation? A loss of power would be inevitable if women worldwide were ever truly emancipated, so why would men ever want to relinquish the upper hand to a tribe of competitors? Does George expect women to be more like men in order to fit into a man's world? Until women are freed of sex slave status and incubators to children, we will never be equal. And, when we are free of our sexual functions and gynaecological entrapments, men will kill us as superfluous to their needs and because we pose a threat to diminishing natural resources. But that's another post!
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| Bubbles: Children At Play by Charles Dawson Watson 1856 |
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