George Gissing: A Fan's Commonplace Blog

Commonplace 202  George & The Woman Question PART ONE

With Pablo Picasso portraits of Dora Maar.

'It's all very well to be womanly, but don't be womanish', Dyce Lashmar, the eponymous Charlatan tells his betrothed Iris, when she seeks reassurance that he loves her. She carries on asking for the words that will prove he is totally committed to their marriage. 'You're not sorry you're going to marry me?' she asks, forlornly. 'You're getting hysterical, and I can't stand that', he replies. When scholars say George put himself into his novels, don't forget a large chunk of him went Dyce Lashmar's way.

1936

George had some fairly awful things to say about women. Despite his claim to be for their emancipation, his ideas for this seem to be centred on doing away with regional accents 'norf' click (London, in particular) and getting wives to agree to living apart from husbands whilst still making themselves available as facilitator for a husband's sexual needs, or whatever else they could be used for (sewing, housework, an effective wind break). The inner lives of women were a mystery to him, and his female characters are pale and superficial types rather than real people with real ambitions and intellects.  

George was hard on his heroines in ways he wasn't on his heroes and always made sure the female character's story arcs involved some sort of comeuppance. His women are never allowed to rise above their social situations as home-makers, nurses, mothers and concubines. Here is a random selection:

Clara and her destroyed beauty (the vile act done by another woman) in Nether World; Adela having to marry beneath her in Demos; Iris (see above) and the run-around from Dyce Lashmar in Charlatan; Alma Rolfe humiliated over her dream of being a concert violinist and then being treated as a whore by Cyrus Redgrave in Whirlpool; Ida Starr for being a working girl in Unclassed; Rhoda Nunn for thinking she was above marriage, and Monica for marrying above her station in Odd Women; Marian Yule being rejected by the odious Jasper Milvain in New Grub Street. Read any book of George's, and there you will find these poor, abused females - even Henry Ryecroft has this description of a non-person housekeeper: '... she is low-voiced, light-footed, strong and deft enough to render me all the service I require, and not afraid of solitude'. Some men compartmentalise women into functional categories, based on usefulness more than any other factor. Looks and sexuality are useful functional categories. The advantage to this system is that a new model can always be acquired when the old one no longer performs its function to the man's approval. Although I refute the claim Marianne aka Nell was ever a prostitute, you can see why George might have found the grisette fantasy (or, tyranny, from the woman's perspective) so appealing. If George had visited Japan, he would have visited the geisha and thought he was following some ancient tradition worth endorsing.

1937

And, then there are the non-fiction writings. Why, oh why does he do it? And where did all this 'wisdom' come from? We are not speaking of the random thoughts of a seasoned ladies' man here - at most he will possibly have slept with someone before Marianne, probably Marianne, definitely Edith (twice) and possibly a lodgings landlady and maybe Mrs Gaussen, though I tend to think not. He certainly never slept with Gabrielle. Add to this the women he knew but not as partners - three family members, in his two sisters and  mother, and Clara Collet, a woman of indeterminate sex to him as she was not his type. Peppered along the way will have been literary men's wives: half a dozen at most. This is the basis on which George could say he had made a serious study of the female psyche and had emerged as an expert. Reading about women was probably the most common source of his information - despite what he says about journalism, George was an avid reader of all kinds of newsprint, and many of the incidents in his books may have been lifted from real life or its equivalents as reported in the press, which is why some of them are almost written as if said in passing with very little emotional affect attached. 

Let's look at some of the entries George made in his Commonplace Book under the heading 'Women'. We presume these were the meaningful to him noodlings he jotted down to keep for future reference, very much as one might do if she devised a witty and informative, slightly irreverent, highly entertaining and visually absorbing blog intended for the serendipitous reader to fill an idle five minutes. Oh, dear. You just remember these the next time someone tries to tell you he wasn't a misogynist! 

Hatred between men is not common, & when it exists is due to the most various causes. Hatred between women is universal, & always due to one common cause - wounded vanity. 

Herodotus begins his history with a search for original cause of quarrel between Europe & Asia, - and finds it in Woman. Perhaps, as Heine suggests, symbolical of all history.

I have never discovered any greater tenderness in women than may be observed in men, but I have often been struck by the superior energy and pertinacity of their hatred.

I want to be kind, because I have a great affection for the annoying old fart, but, really... George what can you have been thinking of? Which goggles were you wearing when you wrote these egregious things? Oh, I remember: the Arthur Schopenhauer ones. Go look up Commonplace 4 and read how much is filched from Arthur.

1939

Where do we start?

'Hatred between men is not common'. I actually had to reread this the first time I saw it because I thought there was a typo, and should have read 'Hatred between men is not uncommon'. Even in his cloistered surroundings, George would have been aware of the various conflicts besetting his world. In George's lifetime the British were involved in 16 wars or military campaigns. As most of these involved us Brits stealing land off indigenous peoples, might we not assume hatred was engendered, and have we not been reaping some of that whirlwind ever since? What sort of hatred is he talking about? Didn't Roman and Greek men hate their foes? Maybe he feels covered by the vagaries of 'various causes', but that makes for a paltry argument.

We move on to hatred between women. I am wary of any claim to an absolute in opinions - rank total generalisations say more about the speaker than the subject. Is there hatred among women and is it 'universal'? And, if it exists, does it ever involve 'wounded vanity'? I hate no-one, but, if I allowed myself to imbibe, I can't think of a single woman who would be in my 'Top 10 People To Hate' list - because those places would be taken up by men. Cruel men. And, if what George says were true, why do so many women have lifelong female friendships of deep mutual trust and joy? Besides, women are too busy hating their oppressors to hate other women; and their torturers and their victimisers - these are invariably men require what hatred is left over. I think wounded vanity is the last thing that comes into the rape victim's mind when she hates the rapist. I think this is a case of George loquens stercore.

1941

'Women are to blame for the woes of Europe and Asia'? Yeah, right. ISIS and the Worldwide Caliphate were thought by women, weren't they? click

Women no more tender than men? Possibly, because compassion is not a gender-biased trait. But women having superior energy and pertinacity of their hatred? Do women hate for longer and with more vigour? Well, women have a great deal to hate men for; but we know we don't have exclusive rights to being kept in servitude, or being regularly abused, tortured or murdered, treated as inferiors and betrayed by powerful men who are vicious, inadequate, arrogant, violent, cruel and spiteful. We know some men are in a similar position. Do women have much longer memories for transgressions against us? Was Edith's hatred stronger than George's?  Or, maybe it was that she was an authentic communicator who felt entitled to speak her mind, whilst George was... not. She did have a lot to hate him for. She was married under false pretences, he no doubt destroyed her self-esteem, threw her off when it suited him, deprived her of her child, used strangers as a means of control over her life, gave her syphilis and eventually drove her insane... good reasons to hate a man, I suppose. But did she hate him or was she just angry with him? I doubt if George ever listened to her feedback or complaints in a constructive way or credited her with much feeling - being as how he saw her as an inferior on every level, and really not mother material, just sex receptacle. As we only have George's account of his time with her, how can we know what really happened? Never be fooled into thinking Edith was anything but collateral damage in George's so-called heroic life, and thus she was genuinely deserving of our sympathy.

JOIN ME IN PART TWO TO LOOK AT WHAT GEORGE SAID ABOUT CHARLES DICKENS AND WOMEN CHARACTERS.