Planteamiento de la propuesta.

The issue of education and its relationship with the domestic life of the woman and child reader has an enormous impact on representations of this figure throughout the literature of the nineteenth century. ‘Of Queen’s Gardens’ is an important text in this respect because it brings together ideas of domesticity and reading with thoughts on education in a way that has been overlooked in recent years. In December 1864 Ruskin gave two, now famous, lectures in Rusholme, near Manchester to raise money for the Rusholme Institute library, and inner city schools for the impoverished. These lectures, ‘Of Kings’ Treasuries’, and ‘Of Queen’s Gardens’ were then published the next year under the title Sesame and Lilies.

These lectures have, as with Patmore’s TheAngel in the House, taken on a life of their own which I consider to be once again quite separate from the original intentions of the text. Dinah Birch goes some way towards

explaining this digression when she writes that Sesame and Lilies “was for decades a favoured choice as a prize for schoolgirls. As such it found a place, as a sign of success in the established order, on the shelves of countless young women.” (‘Ruskin’s Womanly Mind’ 107). This image of Ruskin’s book as one handed out as a prize book to school girls speaks directly to the kind of tensions between images of domesticity and the reader that we have been examining.

A sense of frustration with the text is most memorably expressed in Kate Millett’s infamous essay of 1970, ‘Ruskin Versus Mill’ in which she

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condemns Ruskin’s work, claiming that “Ruskin’s lecture is significant as one of the most complete insights obtainable into that compulsive

masculine fantasy one might call the official Victorian attitude” (122). This reading of Ruskin has been accepted at face value until quite recently when research into the contemporary reception of Ruskin’s essays suggests that progressive women readers regarded ‘Of Queen’s Gardens’ as a positive contribution to the discussion taking place over women’s education. Ruskin was keenly interested in the foundation of the first women’s colleges in Oxford, particularly Somerville, and endowed them with valuable pictures and artefacts. He also lent his support to Whitelands, a new women’s college in London, and to a girls school in Cork” (Birch, ‘Ruskin’s Womanly Mind’ 108). In ‘Of Queen’s Gardens’ Ruskin argues seriously for educational reforms for women, and yet our reading of his work is clouded by Millett’s enduring perspective.

One immediate complication that presents itself in a reading of ‘Of Queen’s Gardens’ is that Ruskin frames his debate over women’s education and reading with all too familiar rhetoric over the relationship between wife and home. The role of the wife and this domestic space are completely interlinked. In fact, Ruskin asserts that “wherever a true wife comes, this home is always round her. The stars only may be over her head; the

glowworm in the night-cold grass may be the only fire at her foot; but home is yet wherever she is; and for a noble woman it stretches far round her” (Sesame and Lilies 119).

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Such a sentiment would certainly be at home in the work of Sarah Ellis or T. S. Arthur, and marks once more the familiar veneration of the

domestic ideal. Here Ruskin strips the idea of home of all physical

objectivity, locating it instead firmly in the bosom of the adored Angel in the House. What is significant about this argument in terms of the

relationship between reader and domesticity is that this ideal is once again represented in a discussion of women’s education and reading. We

repeatedly find that these descriptions of ideal womanhood embedded in a literature seeking to create this ideal. Ruskin segues between the idea of homemaker and educated young woman when he writes:

…she must—as far as one can use such terms of a human creature— be incapable of error? […] She must be enduringly, incorruptibly good; instinctively, infallibly wise—wise, not for self-development, but for self-renunciation: wise, not that she may set herself above her husband, but that she may never fail from his side. (119)

In this Ruskin raises the stakes of women’s education, demanding an impossible level of perfection. We see more examples of the Angel in the House rhetoric that Woolf found herself struggling against in Ruskin’s description of the bond between husband and wife, and the importance of self-sacrifice. Again, selflessness is highlighted as a defining feature of femininity. Amanda Anderson writes that Ruskin’s lecture reveals “the internal complexity and multifaceted character of the Victorian

understanding of ideal femininity” (35). This ‘multifaceted character’ expresses the contradictory nature of Ruskin’s views on femininity and

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power. Anderson continues that Ruskin both “emphasised selflessness and sympathetic communing and […]allotted to women far-reaching forms of guardianship and influence, which in turn depended on cultivated practices of moral discernment, impersonal judgement, and even self-crafting.” (Anderson 35)

The reason that Ruskin’s work provokes such debate is made clear here. In its contradictory approaches, however, it is important to note that Ruskin’s methods for achieving this ideal model of femininity are grounded in a practical and vigorous defence of women’s education.

if there were to be any difference between a girl's education and a boy's, I should say that of the two the girl should be earlier led, as her intellect ripens faster, into deep and serious subjects: and that her range of literature should be, not more, but less frivolous; calculated to add the qualities of patience and seriousness to her natural

poignancy of thought and quickness of wit; and also to keep her in a lofty and pure element of thought. I enter not now into any question of choice of books; only let us be sure that her books are not heaped up in her lap as they fall out of the package of the circulating library, wet with the last and lightest spray of the fountain of folly. (Sesame and Lilies 129)

Ruskin begins his discussion in a way that many will find surprising, given his conservative reputation, in arguing that a girl’s education should begin earlier than that of her male counterpart because ‘her intellect ripens faster, into deep and serious subjects’. One of the most important things to

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note about Ruskin’s essay is the gravity with which he treats the issue of women’s education and their reading. The language used here is indicative of this serious treatment; the ‘serious subjects’, ‘not more, but less

frivolous’, and ‘lofty and pure element of thought’, all of these examples make a refreshing change from the discourse we have encountered thus far on women’s reading which is typically entrenched in the language of

domesticity and femininity. This change in tone is matched by a significant change in attitude towards control over reading material. While Ruskin engages with the ‘natural’ qualities a woman possesses, here they are described as ‘poignancy of thought and quickness of wit’. Such qualities are a departure from the typical rhetoric of ‘natural’ femininity. Compare this, for example, with the superficial acts of reading we saw advocated in Etiquette for Ladies. Ruskin on the other hand argues that women should read more widely and more deeply, not less, and he makes this argument because of their gender. In doing so we may see elements of the same arguments used by Frances Cobbe. While here Ruskin argues against an overindulgence in books of ‘folly’ from the circulating library, his

motivation is not one of fear of the influence of these books, but rather a different concern that women should read what is intellectually – rather than domestically – improving. He clarifies his position on the ‘sore temptation of novel reading’ (130) when he writes:

The weakest romance is not so stupefying as the lower forms of religious exciting literature, and the worst romance is not so

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But the best romance becomes dangerous, if, by its excitement, it renders the ordinary course of life uninteresting, and increases the morbid thirst for useless acquaintance with scenes in which we shall never be called upon to act. (Sesame and Lilies 130)

Here, typical fears of the novel are dismissed as being just as present in a bad novel as in a bad history or philosophy book, rather Ruskin’s issue with the novel is one grounded in logical argument. While Ruskin’s argument that a good novel may become ‘dangerous’ because of its ‘excitement’ may seem familiar, it is not because this excitement may prove corruptive, nor is it because the behaviour found in novels may be enacted in real life. In fact, Ruskin argues that this novel is a waste of time precisely because these scenes are ones ‘in which we shall never be called upon to act.’ In Ruskin’s argument the woman reader is not too silly to handle the depravity of the novel, the novel is too silly to help the woman reach her full intellectual potential. There is a fine difference between Ruskin’s criticism of the novel and the work of many of the other critics we will be discussing in this thesis, and yet it is a crucial one. This argument is supported when he writes:

I speak therefore of good novels only; and our modern literature is particularly rich in types of such. Well read, indeed, these books have serious use, being nothing less than treatises on moral anatomy and chemistry; studies of human nature in the elements of it. (Sesame and Lilies 131)

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Here, Ruskin defends the good novel as a useful tool for character building. Ruskin also gestures to problems with uneducated reading – if ‘well read’ these books could have ‘serious use’, but as they are ‘hardly ever read with earnestness’ this point is moot. This idea is significant because Ruskin identifies novel reading as a potential tool for education. Novels, Ruskin asserts, have the potential to teach us about morality and human nature – but only if read seriously. Here, the argument seems to be that if you create a better educated woman reader she will gain more – both morally, and intellectually (as Ruskin aligns the two ideas ‘moral anatomy and chemistry’) – from the book. Just as those who are naturally good, will take good from the novel, so will those better educated take something better educating. Here, Ruskin neatly subverts the arguments of the novel’s critics in a way that we will see is also explored in M. E. Braddon’s The Doctor’s Wife. Perhaps assuming that this level of earnestness does not at present exist in the woman reader there is still an element of censorship in Ruskin’s argument when he writes:

Keep the modern magazine and novel out of your girl's way: turn her loose into the old library every wet day, and let her alone. She will find what is good for her; you cannot: for there is just this difference between the making of a girl's character and a boy's—you may chisel a boy into shape, as you would a rock, or hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you would a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer a girl into anything. She grows as a flower does (Sesame and Lilies 132)

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Again, any ideas that modern novels or magazines may be detrimental are born of a fear of ‘folly’. Ruskin does not fear the seriousness of a powerful book and its effects on a young woman, but rather a certain ‘emptiness’ within the text. Again we see the argument that the well educated woman reader has less to fear from the reading experience than the overly-sheltered reader. Ruskin advocates a freedom for the woman reader that relies on the ‘natural’ qualities of femininity, but he does so by suggesting that because these qualities are natural, the reader does not need to be policed into subscribing to them – she will do so herself. In this way Ruskin subverts the model of a constricted femininity but he often uses similar rhetoric to make this point. Curiously, Ruskin’s theories of raising and educating young girls seem far more enlightened than his take on educating young men, and an idea of hammering a boy into the shape of one’s choosing.

While Ruskin’s use of hyper-feminized imagery is problematic, if we once again detach the idea from the rhetoric we may find Ruskin’s ideas quite radically opposed to those found in Millett’s selective reading. Here, rather than a fear-driven increase of control, Ruskin advocates a far more relaxed and trusting approach to women’s reading. Perhaps most

convincing is Ruskin’s conclusion that “you bring up your girls as if they were meant for sideboard ornaments, and then complain of their frivolity. Give them the same advantages that you give their brothers—appeal to the same grand instincts of virtue in them; teach them, also, that courage and truth are the pillars of their being” (Sesame and Lilies 135). Far from

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participating in the hypocrisy and contradictions associated with the construction of an ideal femininity, Ruskin identifies this as being problematic.

In November and December 1865, following the publication of Sesame and Lilies, the Victoria Magazine published a two-part essay titled ‘Mr. Ruskin on Books and Women’. The reviewer opens by acknowledging the publication of the two essays, “which have given occasion to some severe criticisms, but which appear to us to contain such excellent teaching, that we propose to follow our usual plan of letting the book speak for itself, as much as possible, before we intrude any observations of our own” (67). There then follows a largely positive review, which reproduces significant chunks of the essays for the Victoria Magazine readers to sample.

Unsurprisingly, the negative comments made by the reviewer focus on Ruskin’s rhetoric of domesticity and the social and moral role of the wife.30

It is these conservative assertions that seem so at odds with the rest of his discourse that make Ruskin such a target for accusations of misogyny, and that, I would argue, leads to an oversimplification in the reading of this complicated text. However, as the Victoria Magazine asserts, Ruskin’s thesis is not without significant value.

we cannot conclude without expressing our gratitude for this valuable contribution towards the solution of that difficult question—how to

30 _{A major flaw with this idea, which extended far beyond Ruskin’s essay, was, as we have already}

noted, that by 1851 the census revealed that women outnumbered men by 860,000. This fact is

quickly picked up by the critic writing for the Victoria Magazine::

“We have already intimated that we think Mr. Ruskin has overlooked the fact, that while there is a surplus of at least half a million of women, it is worse than useless, in offering suggestions upon education, to propound the theory that a woman is to be educated only so far as may enable her to sympathise in her husband's pleasures, and in those of his best friends “(131).

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turn the powers of women to the best and highest advantage? […] "Sesame and Lilies" is a book we hope all our readers will study for themselves; they have probably by this time read many unfavourable criticisms upon it, for it is written in far too high a key to meet with a general response in a hard and superficial age. (137)

Here we find the tone of the review as a whole. I think it would be an enormous oversimplification to dismiss Ruskin, as Millet does, as a writer in opposition to the feminist agenda of someone like Mill. Here, and

elsewhere in the review, the reviewer is quick to express gratitude towards Ruskin’s arguments. It is clear that his essays are problematic and at times too tentative, but taken in the context of their time perhaps history should be more forgiving. Ruskin attempts to reconcile the demands upon the woman reader through discussing education and reading within a

framework of domesticity. That he is not wholly successful is hardly to be wondered at given — as we have seen — the contradictory nature of these demands. Ruskin’s text therefore sits comfortably alongside other

domestically driven conduct literature about reading that we have

encountered so far in this chapter, and offers a slightly different argument.