Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth
(1853) is one of the most famous nineteenth-century novels to deal with a ‘fallen
woman’, who loses her virginity before marriage and bears an illegitimate
child. And sympathetic as the novel is to Ruth, a dressmaker’s apprentice who
is only 15 at the time of her seduction, and designed as it is to highlight the
ill treatment of women like her, the novel is instructive when it comes to
understanding Victorian constructions of (female) virginity and explanations as
to what can make it ‘vulnerable’.
There are many ways in which Ruth is presented as the archetypal
virgin, whose seduction is, if not inevitable, far from surprising and maybe
even a ‘natural’ result of her characteristics and the attendant circumstances
of her situation:
1. The virgin is youthful,
but physically developed
Like Thomas Hardy’s Tess, Gaskell’s Ruth has a dangerous
(and apparently dangerously attractive!) mixture of extreme youth, with its
corresponding naivety, and a sexually mature body. She first meets Henry
Bellingham, who seduces her, through attending the Shire Ball as a sort of in situ lady’s maid, an office for which
her employer picks her specifically because her ‘waving outline of figure’ will
be ‘a credit to the [dressmaker’s] house’. Yet to Ruth her selection is ‘inexplicable’-
a sure sign of her unworldliness. Ruth’s youth is such that, even when she is
pregnant and abandoned, the servant Sally describes her as a ‘chit’ who cannot
possibly be a widow and the narrator tells us, when her child is nearing year
old, Ruth still looks so young that ‘she hardly seemed she could be the mother
of the noble babe’. While emphasising Ruth’s age cements her victim status it
is a crucial component of what attracts people to her – whether the caddish
Bellingham (who, at 23, enjoys that he is her senior) or the kind clergyman Mr
Benson who takes her in.
2. The virgin is
beautiful
It almost goes without saying that Gaskell’s heroine will be
beautiful and – importantly – artlessly and simply so. Ruth comes to Bellingham’s
attention not only because of her good looks but because in them she contrasts
with the ‘flippant, bright and artificial girl’ who is his dance partner at the
ball. Ruth’s beauty is set off by its naturalness,
as well as its childishness. When Bellingham begins to pursue her, we are told ‘He
did not know why he was so fascinated by her. She was very beautiful, but he
had seen others equally beautiful, and with many more agaceries calculated to set off the effect of their charms. There
was, perhaps, something bewitching in the union of grace and loveliness of
womanhood with the naiveté,
simplicity, and innocence of an intelligent child’. Beauty is important (note
how Gaskell does not say Bellingham has seen anyone more beautiful!) but it is not enough in itself to typify the
idealised virginal figure of the Victorian period.
 |
| Portrait of a Girld, John Everett Millais |
3. The virgin is prized
for her purity of thought, as well as body
Linked to these ideas of childishness and artless beauty is the
virgin’s ignorance when it comes to all things sexual. It isn’t just that the
virgin hasn’t had sex – we are led to
believe she has never even thought of
it. Gaskell is at pains to make this explicit for us: ‘She was too young when
her mother died to have received any cautions or words of advice respecting the subject of a woman’s life…Ruth was
innocent and snow-pure. She had heard of falling in love, but did not know the
signs and the symptoms thereof’. Gaskell’s use of the phrase ‘falling in love’
here isn’t just nineteenth-century delicacy – the phrases mirrors Ruth’s few
thoughts on the matter which have been emotional, not sexual – and her argument
is almost contradictory. On the one hand Ruth’s ignorance is abnormal – the consequence
of being orphaned young – but on the other it is entirely natural. The virgin
is untouched by any polluting conversation or by any stirrings of desire from
within.
4. The virgin is linked
to nature (for good and bad)
The naturalness of the virgin state – but also the fact that
this state makes her a prime ‘target’ for men and ‘ready’ for reproduction – is
also indicated through the pleasure fictional Victorian virgins are of shown to
derive from their natural surroundings. Ruth’s claustrophobic urban quarters
may be the inhospitable home from which she is tempted away by Bellington’s
advances, but things only come to a crisis as a result of long country walks.
And Ruth, as she appears when framed by nature, is all the more attractive in
this environment: ‘She wound in and out in natural, graceful, wavy lines
between the luxuriant and overgrown shrubs, which were fragrant with a leafy
smell of spring growth; she went on, careless of watchful eyes, indeed
unconscious, for the time, of their existence.’ The wavy lines of the country
garden recall the ‘waving outline’ of Ruth’s own curvaceous figure and the
almost overwhelming fecundity of nature also suggests her sexual readiness,
even if her mind is ‘for the time’ unaware of this. In this way she again prefigures
Tess – Hardy’s ‘pure woman’ – watched by Alex and Angel in fertile natural
environments.
5. The virgin is free
from familial ties (and protection)
Ruth’s orphaned state (alluded to in point three) doesn’t
just mark her out as ignorant of men’s desires – conversely it also labels her
even more directly as a potential sexual partner. Without a home to leave, she
is primed to create another family and show other people affection – both emotionally
and economically. She has already done this platonically with her fellow apprentice
Jenny, but, with Jenny ill and Bellingham pursuing her we are told ‘Jenny’s
place in Ruth’s heart was filled up’. Ruth’s fertility and natural affection
could have be beneficial to her, if only Henry Bellingham was a man willing to
offer her a true (legitimate and marital) home.
When it comes to apportioning blame for Ruth’s ‘fall’, the
fact that Ruth is such an embodiment of desirable virginity is not the only
factor in her downfall. Many are blamed for her failure to adhere to strict
Victorian codes of morality, including her seducer, class and economic factors,
the unkindness of other women (particularly Mrs Mason and Miss Duncombe), her guardian
and, of course, Ruth herself.
Gaskell was criticised for giving Ruth too many mitigating
factors to excuse her behaviour (i.e. failing to confront Ruth’s own
sexuality), but importantly she does not let her off the hook. Although it is
rescinded later, and given under duress, there is a moment at which Ruth gives
her consent: ‘Low, and soft, with much hesitation, came the “Yes”; the fatal
word of which she so little imagined the infinite consequences.’ Many factors
may make a young Victorian woman vulnerable – but the responsibility for
protecting her virginity is ultimately her own.
What should ‘W’ be in my Victorian Alphabet? Let me know –
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@SVictorianist! And you can check
out further posts on Elizabeth Gaskell
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