Victorian Space(s)

Today there's a colloquium at the Leeds Trinity & All Saints in which there is scheduled a Brontë-related presentation:

Victorian Space(s)
Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies
Seventeenth Northern Victorian Studies Colloquium
18th March 2006 at Trinity & All Saints, Leeds

Victorian understandings of ‘space’ encompassed literal and artistic border crossings; the processes of colonisation, 'exploration' and mapping; the creation of institutions that in turn gave rise to the built environment; transitional spaces and gendered spaces. In other words, the 'spaces' that went to make up the Victorian. This colloquium will bring together those who look at the construction and constitution of 'space' as the Victorians understood and experienced it, and those spaces relating to the creation of a wider Victorian community.

Session B: 11.15-12.00
Jennifer English
‘Refiguring the Marital Home: Helen’s Appropriation of Interior Space in The Tennant of Wildfell Hall’

John Ruskin’s famous description of the nineteenth-century marital home in "Of Queen’s Gardens" illustrates it as a "place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division" (p. 116), a haven for both husband and wife in which the husband may escape the pressures of the public sphere and the wife need experience "no danger, no temptation, no cause of error or offense" (p. 115). While Ruskin emphasizes the protective function of the home for both husband and wife, and underscores the importance of each partner taking part in prohibiting the cares of the outside world from penetrating the abode, this initial appearance of parity in the task of maintaining the inviolability of the home is disrupted by his assertion that this is the husband’s domicile, and that these precautions must be taken to protect the necessary sanctity "within his house" (p. 116, emphasis mine). While Ruskin claims that the home is a space that affords comfort and protection to the wife, his emphasis on the husband’s ownership of the home relegates the wife’s sense of peace and restfulness to a position subordinate to and contingent upon that of her husband.
In Anne Brontë’s novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, the heroine’s interaction with and experience of interior space at Grassdale Manor is a stark departure from the ideal of the home posited by Ruskin. Far from being a place of "[p]eace" or "shelter" (Ruskin p. 116), Grassdale is instead characterized by Arthur Huntingdon’s bawdy antics and Helen’s attempts to escape them. In the novel, Helen appropriates spaces within her husband’s home to establish a personal retreat for herself; these spaces are employed in a strategy to protect herself from what she perceives as the "contaminating influence" (Brontë p. 323) of her husband and his companions. The library thus becomes a "refuge" (Brontë p. 147) that is "entirely [her] own" (Brontë p. 353), while she reserves her bedroom as "[her] own chamber" (Brontë p. 210). Entry into either one of Helen’s refuges, by either Arthur or one of his consorts, is perceived as more than a mere intrusion; entry into the library or her chamber signifies a violation and a contamination of both her personal space and her self. By claiming space within her husband’s home as a strategy to escape association with him, by positing him and his companions as contaminants to her self and to her person, and by refusing to denigrate herself to fulfill the role of conventional wife, Helen denies Arthur’s possession of her body as property and violates the terms of the sexual contract. This paper will position Brontë’s text as unconventional in its treatment of the home and will explore Helen’s appropriation of space within the marital home as a transgressive act.

Works Cited
Brontë, Anne. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. New York: Penguin, 1996/1848.
Ruskin, John. "Of Queen’s Gardens." Sesame and Lilies. New York: Crowell, 1891.

Categories: Talks, Scholar, The_Tenant_of_Wildfell_Hall, Anne_Brontë