Since I and Emma heard each other’s call
And were Companions once again . . . ’
Dorothy and William were indeed companions now. They were able to share ideas and interests as Dorothy inspired, copied, discussed (and, maybe, contributed to) his poetry. It was a relationship few women were able to have with their husbands (or brothers), for, at this time, the two sexes were expected to inhabit different mental landscapes.
‘[Women] are not formed to govern the state, to make war, or to enter into the church,’ declared one of the eighteenth century’s most popular educational treatises – at a stroke cutting genteel women off from nearly all the interests considered proper for a gentleman. Instead a woman’s role was to ‘regulate the minutiae of domestic affairs’.1 Indeed many people believed that male and female minds were fundamentally different. ‘Male genius fetches its treasures from the depths of science, and the accumulated wisdom of the ages’, wrote Laetitia Matilda Hawkins: ‘the female finds her’s in the lighter regions of fancy and the passing knowledge of the day.’2
These attitudes did not encourage true companionship in marriage. Those careers of government, war and church all drew men away from women whose education did not fit them for understanding politics, military tactics or theology. In the winter of 1795/96, as Jane Austen enjoyed Tom Lefroy’s company in the ballroom and wrote to her sister about silk stockings, white gloves and pink petticoat material, her brother Francis, Lieutenant on HMS Glory, was writing dispassionately in his log: ‘Punished P.C. Smith forty-nine lashes for theft.’3
A boy returning from foreign travel and war might be breathlessly listened to as William Price is listened to in the drawing room of Mansfield Park, but the vast majority of women would have had nothing to contribute: there could be no discussion. And when Jane Austen wished to display the affection of the Price siblings she turned to their conversations about the shared experiences of childhood.4
The Grasmere Journal is an account of a shared, companionate life, and also a record of an extremely intense relationship. Affectionate from the very beginning, as Dorothy sits weeping over her separation from her brother, its trajectory is one of ever more freely expressed love. At least it is up until William’s marriage in October 1802.
The way in which Dorothy wrote about William changed over the time that she kept her journal. During the first year or two he was usually simply ‘William’. But, in the early months of 1802, her language became more charged with emotion. On 2nd February he was ‘My William’. On 4th March he was ‘my darling’ and by 17th March he was ‘my Beloved’, a term of endearment which characterises the rest of the journal until his wedding.
The overall impression is one of extreme intimacy. Dorothy’s happiest times were moments alone with William when they ‘sate talking and happy’5, or were simply together: ‘The fire flutters and the watch ticks I hear nothing else save the Breathing of my Beloved and he now and then pushes his book forward and turns over a leaf.’6
It is a picture of domestic contentment such as Jane Austen draws to portray a genuinely happy marriage. It is the ‘tete-a-tete with the person one feels most agreeable in the world’7 which Mary Crawford describes in Mansfield Park; it is the snug evening, enjoyed by Admiral Croft and his wife in Persuasion when they escape from their friends ‘and shut ourselves into our lodgings, and draw in our chairs’8.
Sometimes Dorothy and William’s moments of companionship were made more intense by physical contact: ‘I read him to sleep – I read Spenser while he leaned on my shoulder.’9 And: ‘After we came in we sate in deep silence at the window – I on a chair and William with his hand on my shoulder. We were deep in Silence and Love, a blessed hour.’10 And again: ‘After dinner we made a pillow of my shoulder, I read to him and my Beloved slept . . . ’11
Here were two people very much in love.
When, several years later, Thomas De Quincey reported the gossip about William having been ‘intimate’ with his sister, he suggested that the rumour had grown up because ‘It is Wordsworth’s custom whenever he meets or parts with any of the female part of his own relations to kiss them – This he has frequently done when he has met his sister . . . in roads or on mountains . . . without heeding whether he was observed or not . . . ’12
De Quincey maintained that the rumour was false; but, as Kathleen Jones has pointed out, he may not have been a very good judge of such things for he was also convinced that Lord Nelson’s relationship with Lady Hamilton was entirely platonic.13
Local gossip would, in fact, have had more to draw on than a few hello-kisses. It is not difficult to see why Dorothy and William’s behaviour might have raised some eyebrows in rural Westmorland as it had done in Germany and Somerset. Dorothy did not hide her feelings. After any separation her joy at meeting her brother again was uncontrollable. ‘I believe I screamed,’14 she admitted on one occasion when there were witnesses to the reunion.
There was also their habit – begun in Somerset – of lying down together outdoors. On one occasion: ‘William lay, and I lay in the trench under the fence . . . William heard me breathing and rustling now and then but we both lay still, and unseen by one another.’ Their motives were entirely poetic – they were intent on absorbing the sights and sounds of the place; but a passing local, seeing them climb in or out of their trench, might well have wondered what they were up to. On the following day they were prone again: ‘We spread the gown, put on each a cloak and there we lay.’15 It is evident from the description of the view that follows that this was on the open fell-side where anyone might have seen them.
These were not farm-folk or servants sprawling on the hillside and rustling about in trenches: these were a lady and a gentleman. Their status would have added spice to the tittle-tattle, but Dorothy probably did not care what people said, echoing perhaps Marianne Dashwood’s opinion of a gossip: ‘I value not her censure any more than I should do her commendation.’16
There were moments when Dorothy felt an intense physical awareness of her ‘darling’. ‘His mouth and breath were very cold when he kissed me,’ she wrote of one reunion17 and of another: ‘He was cool and fresh . . . and smelt sweetly – his clothes were wet. We sate together talking till the first dawning of Day – a happy time.’18
When he was absent from home she attempted to comfort herself by occupying his bed. ‘I slept in Wm’s bed, and I slept badly, for my thoughts were full of William.’19
It is evident that Dorothy’s love for her brother, which had begun in letters during their separation, had changed during the years of proximity. This memorable extract, written when he had just left her for a visit of several days, captures the unsettling intensity of her devotion:
‘I will be busy, I will look well and be well when he comes back to me. O the Darling! Here is one of his bitten apples! I can hardly find in my heart to throw it into the fire . . . I walked round the two Lakes crossed the stepping stones at Rydale Foot. Sate down where we always sit. I was full of thoughts about my darling. Blessings on him . . . ’20
There is pain – and a sense almost of confusion – at the separation, a lingering awareness of the beloved’s physical presence mixed with sheer adoration in her response to that bitten apple. Dorothy sometimes seems to have been overwhelmed and bewildered by her love: not quite sure what to do about it.
Something was troubling Dorothy deeply at this time, and it is hinted at in these uneasy and not quite happy expressions of love. But she does not say why she must struggle to look well when William returned, nor what the thoughts were that filled her head as she sat by the stepping stones.
There is much left unsaid in the journal. Dorothy seems to have reached a point where she could not be honest about her feelings, though she appears unable to stop them spilling onto the page. After all, if this was just a reference book for William, a daily account of events, or an exercise in describing the natural world, there was no particular need for her to say an
ything at all about her feelings, but out they come. Then, always, having said just so much, she draws back. She is certainly no longer attempting the style of those novels she had enjoyed as a girl, in which every nuance of feeling is explored.
Was she sexually attracted to her brother?
The question must occur. There are those beautiful moments of exquisitely pleasurable connection as her beloved rests his head on her shoulder, moments when they are ‘deep in silence and love’; there is Coleridge’s jealousy of a closeness which in some way excluded him; there are the doubts which the folk of both Somerset and Germany had had about the title ‘sister’, and the more definite report that a rumour of incest circulated in Westmorland and London during Dorothy’s own lifetime.
De Quincey was quick to deny this rumour. And, in his recollections, he was also careful to make his description of Dorothy sexually unappealing, writing of her ‘unsexual awkwardness’21 and ‘her stooping attitude when walking . . . which gave an ungraceful, and even an unsexual character to her appearance when out of doors.’22
It seems as if he wished to assure his readers that here was a typical spinster: as pitiable and inoffensive as Miss Bates in Emma. This was a common purpose among male writers of the time. There was a great reluctance to think of single women like Dorothy (who had failed to fulfil their ‘true’ purpose in life) upsetting the social order with their sexuality.
‘The great use of Women in a Community,’ declared Daniel Defoe, ‘is to supply it with Members that may be serviceable, and keep up a Succession.’23
Georgian medical texts agreed with this limited view of the female sex. ‘[S]he is only to Conceive, to give suck, and to breed up Children’, said the writer of An Essay Concerning Human Generation,24 while The Ladies Dispensatory declared that, ‘Being designed by the great Author of Nature for the Vehicle thro’ which the human Species should be propagated . . . it was proper that her Parts should be suited to these Ends’.25
Words such as ‘use’ and ‘serviceable’ implied that a woman’s body and sexuality belonged more to society at large than to the individual herself. So it was with some regret that a writer assuming the pseudonym ‘Philogamus’ (in a discussion of why so many marriages were unhappy) admitted that ‘As Women were principally designed for producing the Species and Men for other greater Ends: we cannot wonder, if their Inclinations and Desires tend chiefly that way.’
He meant that, inconvenient though it was, women enjoyed sex. It just could not be helped. If they didn’t they wouldn’t supply the babies that the human race needed. Consequently – according to the sage ‘Philogamus’ – ‘The great Concern of every Commonwealth, is to keep them within due bounds.’26 Male Georgian moralists had not formulated the idea of angelic female innocence which was to prove a great comfort to their Victorian counterparts. ‘Every Woman is at Heart a Rake’, declared Alexander Pope.27
So – ‘To counterbalance this violent natural Desire,’ wrote Bernard Mandeville, ‘all young Women have strong Notions of Honour carefully inculcated into them from their Infancy. Young Girls are taught to hate a Whore before they know what the Word means; and when they grow up, they find their worldly Interest entirely depending upon the Reputation of their Chastity.’
Or, as Mary Bennet says (having read the pontificating of learned men), ‘loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable . . . one false step involves her in endless ruin . . . ’28 Elizabeth may ‘lift . . . up her eyes in amazement’ at this. But, that’s not because it isn’t true; it is just so obvious it does not need to be said.
This anxious, dangerous vision of women as sexually insatiable, held in check only by custom and law, had been around since at least the Middle Ages. It is the foundation of the persistent fiction that women want to be raped. Or, as Mandeville put it: ‘Most women . . . let them be ever so fully resolv’d to comply, make as great a Shew of Resistance as they can conveniently counterfeit . . . [I]t is . . . a Kind of Salvo to her Honour and Conscience, that she never did fully comply, but was in a Manner forc’d into it. This is the plain natural Reason why most Women refuse, to surrender upon Treaty, and why they delight so much in being storm’d.’29
Early marriage was the preferred method of controlling women’s violent natural desire. (Defoe even believed that ‘no Woman ought to be allowed to marry after her Capacity of Child-bearing has left her’.) Medical men supported the moralists’ views with their theories about ‘hysterica’.
This dire malady, which was peculiar to women, was remarkable for ‘the Variety of Forms, by which it discovers itself.’ It could take the form of almost any disease and only a trained physician could recognise it. (Though no cogent method of diagnosis was ever described.)30
Dr R. James in his Medical Dictionary avoided the indelicacy of directly stating that this mysterious disease was all about a woman’s unsatisfied sexual impulses. But his meaning was clear. He said, ‘[Hysterica] more particularly seizes Virgins before their first menstrual discharge . . . , such as are marriageable . . . and [those] indulging themselves in generous Wines, and Delicacies, which prove a Stimulus to Venery.’ And, he said, ‘Reason, Experience, and the Authorities of the greatest Physicians, concur in pronouncing Matrimony highly beneficial in removing hysteric Disorders.’31
If marriage was the cure for hysterica, it might be supposed that women such as Dorothy (and Jane) who remained unmarried all their lives would be particularly prone to it. However, Dr James does not mention confirmed spinsters in his list of those most at risk. Perhaps the idea of women having sexual feelings that lasted throughout their lives and were entirely independent of their marital status, was just too frightening for the men who wrote these Georgian texts.
Spinsters were made safe in the popular imagination by the notion that chastity itself triggered an alarming degree of physical decay. Even Lady Mary Wortley Montagu fell into this way of thinking. ‘I have a Moral Aversion to be an Old Maid,’ she wrote, ‘and a decaid oak before my Window, leaveless, half rotten, and shaking its wither’d Top, puts me in mind . . . of an Antiquated Virgin, Bald, with Rotten Teeth, and shaking of the Palate.’32
It is alarming to find that even such an intelligent woman as Lady Mary could accept the popular confusion of spinsterhood with the disfigurements of old age. Did she really believe that a husband could somehow prevent her body aging, her hair falling out and her teeth rotting?
By 1838 the myth of the decrepit virgin was so widespread that Richard Carlisle was able to declare confidently: ‘It is a fact that can hardly have escaped the notice of anyone that women who have never had sexual commerce begin to droop when about twenty-five years of age . . . their forms degenerate, their features sink, and the peculiar character of the old maid becomes apparent.’33 Thus superfluous spinsters were rendered harmless. They were not likely to form sexual relationships of any kind. Their passions could be safely distilled into the ‘chagrin and peevishness’ which Dr John Gregory attributed to spinsters when, in his Legacy, he advised his daughters of the dangers of not marrying.
Thomas De Quincey’s description of an ‘unsexual’ Dorothy is unsettlingly similar to Carlisle’s drooping virgin. Perhaps he wished to assure his readers that his admiration was confined entirely to her mind, and that he felt no physical attraction to this stooping little spinster with broken teeth.
But we need not concur with De Quincey and Carlisle. In the twenty-first century there is no reason why such an important part of Dorothy Wordsworth as her sexuality should be dismissed as irrelevant and ugly.
The recent confusing experiences of adults who have been re-united with siblings after separation as children has led to the belief that there is such a phenomenon as Genetic Sexual Attraction. A support group set up to help individuals affected by these issues maintains that as many as fifty per cent of reunited siblings feel some degree of physical attraction to their brother or sister.34 The evidence is, so far, only anecdotal, but, if it was conf
irmed, it would mean that reunited siblings are more likely to be attracted to one another than the average couple meeting for the first time. This suggests it is possible that Dorothy was vulnerable to such an attraction because she and William had been separated after the death of their mother.
The ‘negative imprinting’ – that is a lack of sexual interest in relatives – which deters inbreeding is believed to be caused by intimate contact in childhood rather than by genetic similarity.35 In other words, we tend to find our close childhood companions unsexy when we meet them later in life. It has been suggested that, because of their early separation, Dorothy and William might have lacked this imprinting.
However, there is a problem with this theory. Investigations into this negative imprinting – which psychologists call the Westermarck Effect – have indicated that the crucial period of contact during which individuals learn to recognise relatives to whom they will later feel sexual aversion is the first six years of life.
Dorothy had passed her sixth birthday when she was separated from her brothers.
The Westermarck Effect – which has been observed to be stronger in women than in men – would probably have protected Dorothy, helping her to separate sexual feelings from her deepening love for her brother. However, there may have been other reasons why her peace of mind was disturbed after her arrival in Grasmere.
At twenty-two, eloping with a brother had been an exciting act of defiance. But Dorothy was now thirty years old; she had reached that time of life at which many women begin to experience a growing pressure from their bodies, as well as from society, to produce children, and she was ‘fond of children’.36 She might never have heard about the ticking of a biological clock, but that would not have stopped her suffering from it. She had learned over the last eight years that her relationship with William was a secure and happy one. She also knew now just how desperately he needed her in order to carry on with the work which she believed was his vocation, and Dorothy needed to be needed. While her hormones were urging her to reproduce, her heart was telling her to stay with William.
Jane and Dorothy Page 25