Gender & Nation - Weeks 1-3 Research
In the first three weeks of class, the assigned texts explored the Victorian age’s view on gender, sexuality and nationalism. While some perspectives were pioneering and unseen, some stayed rooted in previous prejudices and perpetuated age-old misconceptions. Each week we delved into new aspects of England from differing sexualities in “Maids, not to you my mind doth change” by Michael Field and “The Other Boat” by E.M. Forster to contrived socialites maintaining social stability in “The Importance of Being Earnest” by Oscar Wilde. Post-victorian World War 1 was also explored in heart wrenching poems by Sassoon, Rosenberg and Owen who tell war for what it truly is: a despicable, avoidable and omnipotently negative affair.
This page will be dedicated to research about these concepts found in the first three weeks of class with everything from text to images and audio or video clips to help paint a bigger picture of the climate of this period.
Perhaps the biggest topic of debate in the 19th century was the place of women in comparison to men in political, social and economical standings. Sarah Stickney, who wrote “Women of England” that was assigned in week one, believed women to play a very domesticated and subsidiary part to men and were charged with cleaning the house and caring for their men at all times.
This is in comparison with Michael Field, AKA Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, who believed in the equality of the sexes in their poem “Maids, not to you my mind doth change”. “Between us is no thought of pain” said Field, stating that the sexes are meant to be on equal footing and a societal equilibrium will be found if they become equal. The two lesbian writers were so adamant in their belief that they had to write under a male psuedonym to be published at all. That in itself shows the problem with patriarchy, in that women at the time couldn’t even be heard unless they were “male”.
While the fight for womens’ rights was underway, the fight for freedom of sexuality was also beginning its first attack. The biggest contrast in view of sexuality in our reading of the Victorian era would be The Importance of Being Earnest versus The Other Boat. While Oscar Wilde was heavily satirical in his play, the ideology of English elite at the time was still true. Men are to be with women, and any deviation is sinful.
Meanwhile, in The Other Boat, E.M. Forster shows just how ridiculous England’s culture is with how an English ship captain is swayed from his heterosexual nature towards the homosexual. The farther he sails from England and the closer he is to the rest of the world he embraces his homosexuality and enjoys freedom of action. However, as he nears his destination of India, an English colony at the time, he “comes back to his senses” and conforms to English customs by breaking off things with Cocoanut, but his emotions get the better of him and he ends up killing his lover and then himself.
The concept of nationalism and what it means to be English is challenged heavily by Wilde and Forster, both now literary legends for their ability to show readers the idiocy of their present time. Nationalism is further disparaged in three poems written by poets during World War 1. Siegriend Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg and Wilfred Owen’s frustration with war and its causes also show the general population’s end of idolizing Great Britain and her political and military choices. The word “nation” loses its meaning to citizens when they are continually lambasted by their government.
The concepts of gender and nationalism were challenged during and after the Victorian era. They are still being shaped today, and will continue into the future indefinitely, both in England and every other country in the world. The rest of this research will be a collage of sorts that showcases more into the ideas of gender and nature as well as England as a whole at the time.
Photo used under Creative Commons from amandabhslater