Kente Cloth Introduction to History Book

Full review at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

A Lady of Quality is a romance by Frances Hodgson Burnett, first published in 1896. If the name rings a bell, it’s because Burnett also wrote Little Lord Fauntleroy, A Little Princess, and The Secret Garden. Today Burnett is remembered for her children’s books, but she also wrote a lot of romantic novels for adults, one of which is A Lady of Quality.

It features melodrama – so much melodrama. People just don’t make melodrama like they used to.

The first thing that you need to know about this book is that it starts off with some really depressing shit. At the start of the story, Asshole Dad marries a much younger woman. She will henceforth be known as Martyr Mom, not because I’m victim blaming but because she represents a very specific Victorian type of female character, one who exists to be good, to be miserable, and to die. Martyr Mom gives birth to nine children in nine years. All but two of these babies die in infancy. Giving birth to Baby #10 kills her, but as she lies in her deathbed she tries to suffocate the baby, who is lying next to her, to save the baby from being raised by Asshole Dad. This is some dark shit, but also an interesting subversion of the Martyr Mom Victorian Trope in that instead of praying over the baby for angels in heaven to guide it on the moral path, she just up and tries to kill it. This sets the tone for a book in which people make some hardcore choices.

The book is actually pretty subversive in terms of morals, with almost all of the moral judgment falling on Asshole Dad and on Oxon – there’s no suggestion that the women he knocked up were immoral, only that they were perhaps naïve and that Oxon was a manipulator and a liar. Even Anne, the voice of morality, encourages Clorinda to keep Oxon’s death a secret, and Anne never judges Clorinda for her sexual behavior or for killing Oxon. Clorinda lives with guilt, but the guilt is part of her life, not something that ruins all her happiness.

The attitudes towards agency are fascinating. Anne is celebrated largely for her passivity, yet Clorinda is adored for her ability to take action and for her refusal to be the puppet of the men in her life. Clorinda views her ability to take action as a sign of her masculine self – just as she has ‘masculine’ traits of being tall and strong, she has ‘masculine’ traits of being stubborn and outspoken and rebellious. Every time she cries, or feels very emotional, she berates herself for being ‘womanly’ and ‘weak’. Is the message that women have the capacity to take charge of their lives, and they should do so, like Clorinda? Or is the message that to be truly feminine is to be passive and emotional, like Anne? Or is the message that women are people, and therefore they can have different personalities, and all kinds of personalities have value? I’m not sure.

What I am sure about is that those wacky Victorians had a lot to sort out with regard to gender, and they could have used some lessons about birth control and hand-washing as well.

- Carrie S.