Elizabeth Gaskell, publishing in 1848, and Thomas Hardy, publishing in 1891, wrote their novels forty-three years apart. Gaskell wrote at the end of the Industrial Revolution, which “caused massive shifts in the organization and control of work and family life” (Surridge 331). Indeed, there were “adjustments of class and gender relations across large sections of English society” during this time (Surridge 331). Mary Barton also takes place following the “hungry forties,” which were categorized by “strikes, widespread unemployment, poor harvests, and depressed trade” (Foster 9). Tess of the D’Urbervilles, while written at the end of the century in 1891, takes place in the 1870s, which was characterized by the Long Depression. Both novels take place following periods of economic unrest in England, and feature fathers who either cannot work or do not work. In Gender at Work in Victorian Culture, Martin A. Danahay posits that work and masculine identity were closely linked during the nineteenth century, and there was a belief that “work was a necessity for a healthy male identity” (9). Because of this, it can be assumed that periods of economic instability created anxiety for men because to “not work is to leave the category of ‘man’” (Danahay 27). The assumption is that those who do work enter the category of man. Mary and Tess enter a masculine role when they become providers; however, what separates Mary and Tess from their fathers is that marriage is still the most convenient way for them to improve their social standing and provide for their families.
In her book Women in the Chartist Movement, Jutta Schwarzkopf illuminates reasons for decreasing male authority in the home following the Industrial Revolution. As mill owners preferred to hire women and youth because they could be paid less than men, the perceived “substitution of women for men as the chief breadwinners…undermined the material base on which male supremacy in the family rested” (Schwarzkopf 264). Women were only hired because it was easier to exploit them. In relation to Mary Barton, Lisa Surridge asks, “In what does manliness consist when work is unavailable and/or control over work impossible?” (332). The implication, of course, is that a man who is not working is not a man, and that it is effeminate to be provided for. As masculine control shifted from the father at home to the factory owner, “working-class manhood was perceived to be under threat” (Surridge 332-3).
When John Barton loses his job after his failed trip to London with the Chartists, Mary becomes responsible for providing for her and her father. In order to do so, Mary pawns some of their household items to feed her father. She sells “superfluities” (Gaskell 162). The first items to go are the “smart tea-tray, and tea-caddy,” which were “long and carefully kept” (Gaskell 162). Next, Mary sells their blankets. She hopes the money she makes by selling them will “last till better times came” (Gaskell 162). It is specifically mentioned that the tea tray and caddy “went for bread for her father” (Gaskell 162). As Mary is provided with meals through her job at Miss Simmonds’ dress shop, her primary concern is making sure John is fed.
Even though he and Mary can barely afford to eat and pay rent, John refuses to apply for relief from the Guardians’ relieving office or the trades’ union. When Mary asks him why he will not accept money, John says, “I don’t want money, child! D—n their charity and their money! I want work and it is my right. I want work” (Gaskell 163). According to Danahay, the idea “work was ‘manly’” was enforced during the nineteenth century (2). From this, it can be assumed John would think it feminine to ask for help, and the only way to provide for himself and Mary is to earn money through physical labour.
Mary, however, is not burdened by the expectations of masculinity, so she can accept financial help. After Margaret has made “more money than [she] can manage” on her singing tour, she offers Mary some because she and Job know John is “out of work” (Gaskell 195). Although Mary does not accept Margaret’s offer at first, she does accept after “her father and his ill looks, and his one meal a day, rushed upon [her]” (Gaskell 195). Indeed, after Mary accepts the sovereign from Margaret, she thinks first of “a comfortable supper for her father that very night” of “the many things it might purchase” (Gaskell 196). Mary demonstrates selflessness and maturity by accepting Margaret’s money. John does not think of Mary’s needs like she does of his. If he did, he would have put his child’s wellbeing ahead of his own masculine pride and asked the union for assistance.
Another way Mary plans to provide for her father is through her imagined marriage to Harry Carson. While Harry never intends to marry her, Mary still dreams about “all the elegant nothings appertaining to ladyhood,” such as ordering her own gowns from Miss Simmonds or walking with Harry’s sisters; however, Mary also thinks “the best of her plans, the holiest…were those relating to her father” (Gaskell 122). She plans to “surround [John] with every comfort she could devise of” (Gaskell 122). Because Gaskell includes the plot with Harry, Susan Zlotnick argues “Gaskell reveals romance is the business of Victorian heroines,” and Mary “possesses only one option—marriage—if she wants to…rise into the middle classes” (81). Mary seems aware of the economic benefits of marrying Harry. She “regards her wealthy lover with the shrewd, appraising eye of a woman who understands the socioeconomic realities of the world” (Zlotnick 81). Mary understands her only real option to permanently change her socioeconomic status and provide a home free of economic strife for her father is to marry a wealthy man.
Even though she knows she should not meet with Harry, Mary “esteemed her love-meetings with Mr Carson as sure to end in her father’s good and happiness” (Gaskell 133). They are for John’s “own good in the end” (Gaskell 133). Mary’s primary reason for wanting to marry Harry is to provide for her father. Mary’s “thoughts dwelt more on the circumstances of ease, and the pomps and vanities awaiting her, than on the lover with whom she was to share them,” illustrating Mary only sees Harry as a way to provide for her father (Gaskell 163). Although she would be providing for her father through marriage and not manual labour, Mary still occupies a more masculine role than her father because she would be providing for him.
When John loses his job after going to London with the Chartists, Mary pays their rent because John cannot. Their rent is “a half-a-crown a week—nearly all Mary’s earnings” (Gaskell 161). After paying rent, not much of Mary’s money remains for food, so Mary is forced to work longer to feed her father. During this time, Mary “never left off work until…she had
earned a few pence, enough for one good meal for her father on the next day” (Gaskell 191-2). Although Mary is only able to make enough money for one meal for John, she is still working to make sure he does eat, instead of simply starving.
Mary is forbidden from working in the mills by her father because he fears it will lead to her becoming a prostitute like Esther. Mary instead “had engaged herself as apprentice…to a certain Miss Simmonds, milliner and dressmaker” (Gaskell 58). As a seamstress, Mary’s work primarily has to do with the feminine. She works for a woman (Miss Simmonds), she works with women (Margaret and Sally), and produces clothing for women (for instance, the mourning dress she and Margaret make the night of the fire at Carson mill). This is opposed to John’s work at the mills, which would have been considered “the preeminent symbol of manly industry” because “manual labor” was the type of work most strongly associated with Victorian masculinity (Danahay 5). It is though feminine work in a feminine sphere that Mary is able to provide for her father, demonstrating that masculine physical labour is not always effective in providing for one’s family. Given that work was a vital part of the male identity, Mary occupies a more masculine sphere than her father because she is working, even if she is surrounded by women as she does it.
Mary is not the only nineteenth-century woman who must replace her father as head of the household. Tess Durbeyfield must also adapt to a world in which she is forced to become her family’s breadwinner because of her father’s inadequacy. In her book Patriarchy and Its Discontents, Joanna Devereux argues that Tess is without a “model of female heroism to copy,” and is therefore “forced to adopt a male-centered point of view” (118). Tess is also “[u]nable to find a male who will save her and her family,” so she is “forced to take the role upon herself” (Devereux 119). Although Devereux concludes that Angel and Alec are the men who force Tess to save herself, I wish to include Tess’s father with Angel and Alec as men who force Tess to act (120). While he could not provide financially for her, John Durbeyfield does inadvertently teach Tess to provide for herself and her family because he fails as a provider.
When she was younger, Tess had to leave school because of John Durbeyfield’s alcoholism and poor work ethic. Tess tells Angel Clare she had to leave school in the Sixth Standard because John “was not very industrious, and he drank a little” (Hardy 207). John was an inadequate provider because of his alcoholism and poor work ethic, so Tess had to fill John’s masculine role as provider because her siblings were too young and her mother would have been occupied with caring for them. The tragedy of Tess having to leave school young is that her teachers noticed “great aptness” in her and thought she “should make a good teacher” (Hardy 207). Because of John, Tess is denied the opportunity to create a better future for herself through teaching, which would have been more closely associated with the middle-class. Given how young Tess was when she left school, John’s masculinity is threatened because a child (especially a female child) is replacing him as breadwinner. This also creates an expectation of Tess fulfilling her father’s role throughout her life.
After John’s night at Rolliver’s, he is too drunk to take the beehives into Casterbridge that morning, so Tess must go. Tess herself is “afraid father won’t be able to take the journey with the beehives to-morrow so early” (Hardy 61). John believes he will be “all right in an hour or two”; however, he is not sober enough to go to Casterbridge. Tess’s mother wakes her up to tell her “[t]he poor man can’t go” (Hardy 61). Tess takes on the role her father fails to fulfill because of his drunkenness when she declares “somebody must go,” and rejects Joan Durbeyfield’s suggestion that a “young feller…[o]ne of them who were so much after dancing with ’ee yesterday” could take Prince into Casterbridge (Hardy 61). Tess “wouldn’t have it for the world,” and considers asking an outsider to take the beehives to Casterbridge something “to be ashamed of” (Hardy 61). Since Tess left school at such a young age to work, she is used to assuming her father’s role and feels it is her duty to continue to do so.
Tess taking Prince to Casterbridge leads to the horse’s death. As a result, “[t]he haggling business, which had mainly depended on the horse, became disorganized forthwith” (Hardy 66). Because of Prince’s death, “[d]istress, if not penury, loomed in the distance” (Hardy 66). Prince was the Durbeyfield family’s primary source of income. Now that he is dead and there is no way to transport the beehives from their farm to the market in Casterbridge, there will be no money coming in to feed and house the members of the Durbeyfield family. If John had been sober, he would have been able to take the beehives to Casterbridge, and Prince’s death could have been avoided. Additionally, John would have fulfilled the masculine expectation of providing for his family through work.
Tess feels it is her responsibility to provide for her family now that Prince is dead. After Prince’s death, she “silently wonder[s] what she could do to help [her parents],” and Tess would “rather try to get work” than to go to Mrs. D’Urberville to “claim kin,” like Joan suggests (Hardy 66, 67). Tess can be contrasted with her father, whose motivation to work “could not be relied on to coincide with the hours of requirement” (Hardy 66). John is also “not particularly persistent when they did so coincide” (Hardy 66). Tess will work when her father will not, which is John’s duty as the family patriarch. Tess does agree to ask Mrs. D’Urberville for help, and is given a job tending to Mrs. D’Urberville’s fowl. Tess planned on getting “together sufficient money during the summer to purchase a new horse,” despite John not liking “[his] children going and making themselves beholden to strange kin” (Hardy 76, 67). He believes he is “the head of the noblest branch o’ the family, and [he] ought to live up to it” (Hardy 67). John’s sentiment means nothing because he does not actually do anything to try to provide for his family. John’s inaction forces Tess to act, looking for financial assistance elsewhere, and ultimately replacing him as breadwinner.
Despite her continued work at various farms throughout Wessex, Tess’s biggest financial assistance comes from Alec D’Urberville. During the nineteenth century, “women were almost all confined to exploiting their own value as sexual commodities…in order to ride into a higher rank of society” (Devereux xviii). Getting involved with a wealthy man is the most reliable way for Tess to provide a steady income for her family. While her family is provided for, she does become a “fallen woman” because of Alec’s attentions. As he tries to seduce her, Alec buys Tess’s father a “new cob,” and her siblings new toys (Hardy 102). Tess’s association with Alec results in a new horse for her father, allowing John to attempt to provide for the rest of the Durbeyfield family. Tess accomplishes something John could not because she succeeds in procuring the new horse.
After Angel has gone to Brazil and Tess’s mother and siblings have been forced out of their home because their lease has not been renewed, Alec offers to support Tess’s family if she agrees to be his mistress. While she resists, Tess eventually relents when faced with the possibility of her family being homeless. Tess has “succumbed to a system which has rewarded her materially for what it condemns morally” (DeVine 96). Despite her family now being well looked after, Tess “does not take joy in the apparent rise in social status gained through submission to Alec” (DeVine 96). Tess must sacrifice her prid
e in order to provide for her family. Before she murders Alec, Tess admits her “little sisters and brothers and [her] mother’s needs—they were the things [he] moved [her] by” (Hardy 381). Although Tess is not earning money to support her family through manual labour like she had been doing while working on the farms, Tess has the means to support her family, unlike her father. Since Tess’s father is dead at this time, she truly is the only one left to support her family. Like Mary and her imagined marriage to Harry Carson, Tess has a “constant focus on others besides herself,” associating her strongly with masculine heroes (Devereux 119).
As industrialization swept England, its effects could be felt in the urban and rural areas. This shift is evident in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton and Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, even though the novels were published forty-three years apart and take place in different parts of England. As the nature of who did work in the family changed, masculinity was threatened as women occasionally took on the role of breadwinner. Whether this is due to economic hardship, like is seen in Mary Barton, or laziness, demonstrated by John Durbeyfield, a woman becoming the breadwinner in her family reflected the eroding masculine authority that characterized the nineteenth century and paved the way for the feminist movements of the twentieth century.
Works Cited
Danahay, Martin A. Gender at Work in Victorian Culture: Literature, Art and Masculinity. Ashgate, 2005.
Devereux, Joanna. Patriarchy and Its Discontents: Sexual Politics in Selected Novels and Stories of Thomas Hardy. Routledge, 2003.
DeVine, Christine. ““A Cloud of Moral Hobgoblins”: Gender, Morality and Class in Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles.” Class in Turn-of-the-Century Novels of Gissing, James, Hardy and Wells. Ashgate, 2005.
Foster, Jennifer. “Introduction.” Mary Barton, edited by Jennifer Foster. Broadview Literary Texts, 2000, pp. 9-20.
Gaskell, Elizabeth. Mary Barton. Edited by Jennifer Foster. Broadview Literary Texts, 2000.
Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D’Urbervilles. 2nd ed. Edited by Sarah E. Maier. Broadview Literary Texts, 2007.
Schwarzkopf, Jutta. Women in the Chartist Movement. Macmillan, 1991.
Surridge, Lisa. “Working-Class Masculinities in “Mary Barton.”” Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 28, no. 2, 2000, pp. 331-343. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2505822.
Zlotnick, Susan. “The Fortune Fall.” Women, Writing, and the Industrial Revolution. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998, pp. 76-122.