Outside of the roles defined in works like Ellis’s and Cobbett’s, there were few practical options for the Victorian woman. Today’s students might wonder why the couple did not simply seek a divorce. John Paget’s description of the labyrinthine world of divorce court in mid-Victorian England helps to explain the practical difficulties in doing so; except for the very rich and those with the temperament to withstand the emotional toll of the process, divorce was not a possibility. The unhappily married couple thus found themselves with few options, and women’s limited financial and legal agency meant her situation was the more precarious of the two. John Stuart Mill’s call for greater equitability in marriage suggests that existing marital expectations for both women and men would more than likely lead to unhappiness. His vision of a new kind of marriage based on equality and mutual value serves as a corrective to the unaccommodating institution that lead the “Modern Love” couple to misery. It is a vision that Meredith embraced, even if he recognized (and repeatedly skewered in his verse and prose) obstacles to effecting those changes posed by the individual’s ego.
“Modern Love” is not the only poem illuminated by the advice manuals and social commentary in this section. Fruitful connections can also be made to many of the Modern Love poems, the poetry included in “Contexts,” and Meredith’s broader oeuvre. For instance, Ellis advises that imagining what life would be like if your spouse died is a good way to relieve marital discontent; Mrs. Graham, a fictional character of Coventry Patmore’s The Angel in the House, passes along similar advice to her son. Ellis’s and John Ruskin’s conceptions of ideal femininity are almost identical to Patmore’s, and understanding the intensity of that ideal sheds light not only upon “Modern Love,” but also on “The Meeting,” “Juggling Jerry,” “Margaret’s Bridal-Eve,” and “The Doe.”
Sarah Stickney Ellis, from The Wives of England (1843)1
Sarah Stickney Ellis (1799–1862) is widely known for her instruction manuals, most of which are directed to young women. Here, she offers a meditation on the nature of marriage, first bemoaning the fact that many enter into marriage with little awareness about the actual experience. She encourages women to tend to their relationships, cultivating them like a garden, and she condemns women’s desire for public attention. Ellis’s vision of the ideal Victorian wife helped establish expectations for both women and the men they would marry. In light of these expectations, one can better understand the ambivalence manifested by the couple in “Modern Love,” as they tried to reconcile their own conflicting desire with prescribed notions of behavior, responsibility, and duty.
If, in the foregoing pages, I have spoken of the married state as one of the trial of principle, rather than of the fruition of hope; and if, upon the whole, my observations should appear to have assumed a discouraging, rather than a cheering character, it has arisen in the first place, from my not having reached, until now, that part of the subject in which the advantages of this connection are fully developed; and if in the second place, I must plead guilty to the charge of desiring to throw some hindrances in the way of youthful aspiration, it has simply been from observing amongst young people generally, how much greater is the tendency to make the experiment for themselves, than to prepare themselves for the experiment. . . .
That this disproportion betwixt expectation and reality, arises from ignorance, rather than any other cause, I am fully prepared to believe—ignorance of the human heart, of the actual circumstances of human life, of the operation of cause and effect in human affairs, and of the relative duty of human beings one towards another.
The numbers who have failed in this way to realize in their experience of married life, the fair pictures which imagination painted before it was tried, it would be useless to attempt to enumerate; as well as to tell how many have thrown the blame of their disappointment upon situation or circumstances—upon husband, servants, friends, or relatives—when the whole has rested with themselves, and has arisen solely out of a want of adaptation in their views and habits to the actual requirements of the new state of existence upon which they have entered.
That this state itself is not capable of the greatest amount of happiness which is expected from it, I should be sorry to deny; and all I would attempt to prove in the way of discouragement is, that its happiness will often prove to be of a different kind from what has been anticipated. All that has been expected to be enjoyed from the indulgence of selfishness, must then of necessity be left out of our calculations, with all that ministers to the pride of superiority, all that gratifies the love of power, all that converts the woman into the heroine, as well as all that renders her an object of general interest and attraction.
It may very naturally be asked, what then remains? I answer, the love of married life; and in this answer is embodied the richest treasure which this earth affords. All other kinds of love, hold by a very slender tenure the object of supreme regard; but here the actual tie is severed only by the stroke of death, while mutual interest, instead of weakening, renders it more secure. The love of a parent for a child, natural, and pure, and holy as it is, can never bind that child beyond a certain period within its influence; while the love of a child for a parent must necessarily be interrupted in the course of nature, by the dissolution of its earthly hold. The love of a brother or a sister must ever be ready to give place to dearer claims; and that of a friend, though “very precious” while it lasts, has no real security for its continuance. And yet all these, according to the laws which regulate our being, in their own place, and measure, supply the natural craving of the human heart for something beyond itself, which it may call its own, and in the certainty of possessing which, it may implicitly repose. . . .
Nor is it only in our human sympathies that this craving is developed. . . . And strange to say, it is sometimes even thus with ambition, and with many of those aims and occupations which absorb man’s life. They are followed, not for the results they bring, so much as for the promises they offer—for the vague hopes they hold out, that their entire accomplishment will satisfy the cravings of an insatiable soul.
But, perhaps, more than in any other case, is it thus with literary fame, in the pursuit of which how many are urged on by a strong, though it may seem to some a fanciful impression, that the voice of feeling which has failed to find an echo in its own immediate sphere, may, in the wide world through which it is sent forth, touch in some unknown breast a sympathetic chord, and thus awaken a responsive emotion.
But if with man, the most powerful and independent of created beings, there ever exists this want of spiritual reliance and communion, what must it be to the weaker heart of woman, to find one earthly hold after another giving way, and to look around upon the great wilderness of life, in which she stands unconnected, and consequently alone? If there be one principle in woman’s nature stronger than all others, it is that which prompts her to seek sympathy and protection from some being whom she may love, and by whom she may be loved in return. The influence of fashion is, perhaps, of all others to which the female sex is exposed, the most hardening to the heart—the most chilling to its warm and genuine emotions. Yet I much question whether the successful candidate for public admiration, would not sometimes willingly retire from the splendid circle in which she is the centre of attraction, to receive in private the real homage of one unsophisticated, noble, and undivided heart. Having failed in this, woman’s first and most excusable ambition, how often does she go forth into the world, to waste upon the cold and polished surface of society, those capabilities of thought and feeling which might, if more wisely directed, have made a happy home; and how often is she compelled to look, appalled and horror-struck, upon the utter emptiness of the reward which follows this expenditure, when the same outlay in a different soil, and under happier culture, might have enabled her to gather into her bosom a hundred-fold, the richer fruits of confidence and affection.
It is only in the married state that the boundless capabilities of woman’s love can
ever be fully known or appreciated. There may, in other situations, be occasional instances of heroic self-sacrifice, and devotion to an earthly object; but it is only here that the lapse of time, and the familiar occasions of every day, can afford opportunities of exhibiting the same spirit, operating through all those minor channels, which flow like fertilizing rills2 through the bosom of every family, where the influence of woman is alike happy in its exercise, and enlightened in its character. . . .
In order to know how to avert [the death of love], it is necessary to endeavour to look calmly and dispassionately at the subject in every point of view, to dispel the visions of imagination, and to ask what is the real cause of failure, where woman has so much at stake.
Love may arise spontaneously, but it does not continue to exist without some care and culture. In a mind whose ideas are all floating at large, and whose emotions of feeling or affection are left to the prompting of impulse, unrestrained by the discipline of reason, there will naturally arise strange wandering thoughts, which will be likely at any unguarded moment to undermine so frail a fabric, as love under such circumstances must ever be.
One tendency in the mind of the married woman who has thus neglected the government of her own feelings, will be, on every occasion of momentary vexation or dissatisfaction, to compare her husband with other men to his disadvantage; than which nothing can be more dangerous, or more inconsistent with that faithfulness which ought ever to be a leading characteristic in the love of married life. Nor can any thing well be more impolitic or absurd; since there is no human being, however excellent, who may not, in some way or other, be made to suffer by comparison with others. Besides which, what right have we, as frail and erring creatures, to aspire, in this connection, to an alliance with a being entirely faultless, or even more perfect than ourselves?
If then there should occasionally arise feelings of disappointment and dissatisfaction, as the lapse of time and a nearer acquaintance develop a husband’s faults, it is good to bear in mind that the same exposure of your own, from the same cause, must necessarily have taken place; and by often dwelling upon this view of the subject, a degree of charitable feeling will be excited, more calculated to humble and chasten the heart, than to imbitter it against the failings of another. . . .
Against the petulance and occasional resentment which an accumulation of [provocations] call forth, there is one great and solemn consideration, by which a woman of right feeling may, at any time, add sufficient weight to the balance in her husband’s favour—she may think of his death, of the emotions with which she would receive his last farewell, and of what would be her situation if deprived at once of his love, his advice, and his protection. We are all perhaps too little accustomed to such thoughts as these, except where illness or accident places them immediately before us. We are too much in the habit of looking upon the thread of life with us, as far more likely to be broken first, and of thinking that the stronger frame must necessarily endure the longest. But one realizing thought that the sentence of widowed loneliness may possibly be ours—how does it sweep away, as by a single breath, the mist of little imperfections which had gathered around a beloved form, and reveal to us at one glance the manly beauties of a noble, or a generous character! . . .
. . . It must ever be borne in mind, that man’s love, even in its happiest exercise, is not like woman’s; for while she employs herself through every hour, in fondly weaving one beloved image into all her thoughts; he gives to her comparatively few of his, and of these perhaps neither the loftiest, nor the best. His highest hopes and brightest energies, must ever be expected to expand themselves upon the promotion of some favourite scheme, or the advancement of some public measure; and if with untiring satisfaction he turns to her after the efforts of the day have been completed; and weary, and perhaps dispirited, comes back to pour into her faithful bosom the history of those trials which the world can never know, and would not pity if it could; if she can thus supply to the extent of his utmost wishes, the sympathy, and the advice, the confidence, and the repose, of which he is in need, she will have little cause to think herself neglected.
It is a wise beginning then, for every married woman to make up her mind to be forgotten through the greater part of every day; to make up her mind to many rivals too, in her husband’s attentions, though not in his love; and amongst these, I would mention one, whose claims it is folly to dispute; since no remonstrances or representations on her part, will ever be able to render less attractive the charms of this competitor. I mean the newspaper, of whose absorbing interest some wives are weak enough to evince a sort of childish jealousy, when they ought rather to congratulate themselves that their most formidable rival is one of paper.
The same observations apply perhaps in a more serious manner to those occupations which lead men into public life. If the object be to do good, either by correcting abuses, or forwarding benevolent designs, and not merely to make himself the head of a party, a judicious and right-principled woman will be too happy for her husband to be instrumental in a noble cause, to put in competition with his public efforts, any loss she may sustain in personal attention, or domestic comfort.
A system of persecution perseveringly carried on against such manly propensities as reading the newspaper, or even against the household derangements necessarily accompanying attention to public business, has the worst possible effect upon a husband’s temper, and general state of feeling. So much so, that I am inclined to think a greater sum of real love has been actually teased away, than ever was destroyed by more direct, or more powerfully operating means.
The same system of teasing is sometimes most unwisely kept up, for the purpose of calling forth a succession of those little personal attentions, which, if not gratuitously rendered, are utterly destitute of value, and ought never to be required.
To all married women, it must be gratifying to receive from a husband just so much attention as indicates a consciousness of her presence; but with this acknowledgement, expressed in any manner which may be most congenial to her husband’s tastes and habits, a woman of true delicacy would surely be satisfied without wishing to stipulate for more.
Still less would she annoy him with an exhibition of her own fondness, under the idea of its being necessarily returned in kind. It is a holy, and a blessed mystery, from the secrets of which, in its mastery over the human mind, almost all women who have ever been beloved, have learned the power of their own tenderness; but in proportion to the purity of its nature, and the sacredness of its exercise, is its capability of being abused and degraded. Thus, all exhibition of fondness before a third party, may justly be looked upon as indicating a total ignorance of the intensity, and the purity, of that which alone deserves the name of love; while, could one imagine the possibility of such a thing, all exercise of this fondness made use of for the purpose of obtaining advantage over a husband’s judgment or inclination, could only be supposed to arise out of the meanest impulse of a low, an artful, and a degraded mind.
But we cannot for a moment imagine such things really are. We cannot believe that a woman conscious of her personal attractions, could hang about her husband’s neck, or weep, or act the impassioned heroine, for the base purpose of inducing him to make some concession, which in his calmer moments he could not be prevailed upon to grant. No, the true heart of woman knows too well, that that sweet gift of heaven, granted in consideration to her weakness, was never meant to be made use of as an instrument of power to gain a selfish end; but was permitted her for the high and holy purpose of softening the harder and more obdurate nature of man, so as to render it capable of impressions upon which the seal of eternity might be set.
It requires much tact, as well as delicacy, to know how to render expressions of endearment at all times appropriate, and consequently acceptable; and as love is far too excellent a thing to be wasted, and tenderness too precious to be thrown away, a sensible woman will most scrupulously consult her husband’s mood and temper in this respect, a
s well as remember always the consideration due to her own personal attractions; for, without some considerable portion of these advantages it will be always safest not to advance very far, unless there should be clear and direct encouragement to do so. Pitiful pictures have been drawn in works of fiction of the hopelessness of efforts of this nature; but one would willingly believe them to be confined to fiction only, for there is happily, in most enlightened female minds, an intuitive perception on these points, by which they may discover almost instantaneously from a look, a tone, a touch responsive to their own, how far it may be desirable to go, and by what shadow they ought to be warned, as well as by what ray of light they ought to be encouraged.
Modern Love and Poems of the English Roadside, with Poems and Ballads Page 20