WHM - The Angel in the House
It’s been a number of years since I could call myself a scholar, and I know a few of you are accomplished Victorianists, so please feel free to correct and/or supplement the following overview.
The concept of the Angel in the House–the popular Victorian notion of the feminine ideal–has its roots in a poem by Coventry Patmore that was first published in 1854. Patmore’s poem about his (apparently ideal) wife, Emily, didn’t receive much attention when it was first published, but became immensely popular through the rest of the nineteenth century and continued to be influential into the twentieth century. Some of the discussions we’ve had here on FMH indicate that vestiges of this ideal are alive and well in our own culture today (which I don’t think surprises anyone).
So who and what is this Angel? What does she do in her House? Well, essentially, she is patient, kind, longsuffering, completely unselfish, and utterly pure. She is the moral compass of the home, there to charm, chide (gently!), give, and forgive. None of which are precisely bad things to do or be. However, the poem itself, together with the spectre of an ideal woman it raises and the male-female relationship it espouses, is intensely unsettling–at least from today’s perspective. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s an excerpt:
Man must be pleased; but him to please
Is woman’s pleasure; down the gulf
Of his condoled necessities
She casts her best, she flings herself.
How often flings for nought, and yokes
Her heart to an icicle or whim,
Whose each impatient word provokes
Another, not from her, but him;
While she, too gentle even to force
His penitence by kind replies,
Waits by, expecting his remorse,
With pardon in her pitying eyes;
And if he once, by shame oppress’d,
A comfortable word confers,
She leans and weeps against his breast,
And seems to think the sin was hers;
Or any eye to see her charms,
At any time, she’s still his wife,
Dearly devoted to his arms;
She loves with love that cannot tire;
And when, ah woe, she loves alone,
Through passionate duty love springs higher,
As grass grows taller round a stone.
What do you make of that?
Writer Virginia Woolf, in her 1931 essay “Professions for Women” wrote about the Angel in the House, a spectre by which she felt haunted, and described her thus:
She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught, she sat in it - in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others. Above all - I need not say it - she was pure. (p. 168)
Woolf describes her intense struggle with the influence of this Angel, feeling as though, whenever she sat down to write, the Angel would appear and say such things as:
‘My dear, you are a young woman. You are writing about a book that has been written by a man. Be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the arts and wiles of our sex. Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all, be pure.’ (pp. 168-170)
In the same essay, Woolf describes how she struggled to murder this Angel who troubled her so, who attempted to keep her from moving beyond the accepted domestic sphere, who attempted to charm and chide (gently!) her into writing only what one might expect a young woman to write. Woolf says the Angel, as a phantom, was much harder to kill than a reality.
We know that this Angel lived strong in literary and popular ideology for quite some time (and I would argue that she is not yet dead). What evidence have you see of the Angel in books and in life? How does this Angel haunt your life today?
(If you’d like the read the poem in its entirety–we’re talking several cantos–you can find it here, along with some related commentary.)
I think the Angel is a Woman who Knows…
Comment by ESO — March 7, 2008 @ 7:53 am
Well, for a less literary example, she’s alive and well at my in-law’s house. My MIL’s ideas of keeping the marriage peaceful are always self sacrificing, martyr-like solutions that include kissing hubby’s butt and making him a favorite meal and then cleaning up after all his messes (literally–she chided (gently!) me and my other sisters in law one time when we were laughing about how we solved the problems of socks on our tables, muddy tracks on our floors, and work clothes strewn across the house).
As for the Angel haunting Virginia Woolf, she still certainly haunts me. I find myself torn between the martyr-angel type and the strong, independent type. It is incredibly hard to vanquish the martyr-angel side of me. I think I’ll prevail eventually, but right now I’m still locked in battle.
Comment by Lessie — March 7, 2008 @ 9:05 am
i think virginia woolf might be a kindred spirit to a few of us.
Comment by chandelle — March 7, 2008 @ 9:11 am
It seems that Patmore is writing this with a guilty heart for all the pain he has caused his wife and the forgiveness she gave.
Looking at the poem from a woman’s perspective I see my sister who was married to an abusive man and took all the blame.
Looking at it from a Man’s perspective… I think more men should take notice of these small sacrifices and be so willing to apologize for the small hurts they’ve given their wives.
In the first perspective I see a sad woman. In the second I see myself and my husband. I love when he acknowledges my patience and my forgiveness. And in that sense it is a lovely poem.
Comment by Liz — March 7, 2008 @ 9:30 am
Thanks for explaining Woolf’s “killing the angel” thing.
The tricky part of attacking this theory of womanhood is not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. (Sorry for the cliche.)
Let’s throw out the sitting in the draft thing.
Let’s throw out the chicken leg thing (unless you like dark meat, of course).
Let’s throw out the apologizing for having needs thing.
But being charming and sympathetic? That’s not necessarily a sign of repression (for some people to whom it does not come naturally, it may be, but not to all).
There is no need to throw holy, godly qualities out with those sitting-in-the-draft qualities that have been linked historically with women being subservient, second-class, non-voting, non-property-holding chattel.
Comment by Researcher — March 7, 2008 @ 9:47 am
Must of been an upper class thing I doubt the a poor Victorian woman struggling to survive would have bothered with it. She would be too busy with reality.
Comment by berrykat — March 7, 2008 @ 10:10 am
Researcher, I take your point that we need not jettison every feminine virtue (in fact, Christianity arguably requires that we rather evangelize men and inculcate them in traditionally feminine virtues).
At the same time, though, I’d argue that charm and sympathy are really rather degraded versions of such holier virtues as compassion, mercy, and charity. The Angel in the House strives above all to please others. The true Christian, while never seeking opportunities to offend, must nevertheless not fear to offend others if the will of God so requires. The true Christian, in the words of the Doctrine and Covenants, must not fear men more than God.
What degraded, hollow virtues like charm and sympathy lack, above all, is integrity, which has always been a problematic virtue for women, since (among other things) it might interfere with their ability to be charming and sympathetic.
Comment by Eve — March 7, 2008 @ 10:23 am
Eve,
Have I ever mentioned that I love every word you write?
Comment by fMhLisa — March 7, 2008 @ 11:22 am
Despite this attitude having certain merits, the “Angel” persona seems fundamentally unhealthy to me. It arose at a period of history when outward expressions of purity and beauty were specifically meant to conceal the seamy underside of Victorian morality: escalating occurrences of male infidelity, widespread prostitution, and an outbreak of mental illness in females that was waved away as “hysteria.” I think, in a large part, the Victorian woman’s attempt to play the “angel” contributed to her unhappiness and the unhappiness of her female counterparts at every class level. Women being admonished to freely forgive, to accept a dysfunctional marriage as somehow related to their abilities as wife and mother, and to demand perfection of themselves gave men license to abuse this figure and the total freedom from accountability it gave them. Sure, we strive to be sympathetic, nurturing, humane individuals, but why should women be the only ones projecting this attitude? Society is negatively impacted, it seems, when half of it is excluded from the responsibility of nurturing a family, extending pity and compassion, and begin willing to overlook faults.
Comment by PMK — March 7, 2008 @ 11:30 am
She is also alive and well in Disney princess movies. Anyone else notice how the princess is always just so perfect in every way. (At least Ariel and Belle think and read and explore - probably the reason they were my favorites). But in every Disney movie, the princesses all talk in high pitched angelic voices. They spend all their time chasing after one prince who won’t glance their way until things are perfect. And falling in love leads to “happily ever after”. There lives end because they acheived their ultimate goal. Ugh. That being said though, I probably will still let my daughter watch the movies because they’re better than the other scuzz on TV.
Comment by Tonya — March 7, 2008 @ 11:53 am
#7 — Bravo, Eve, and well-said. I hope you’ll take the time to write some threads here!
Comment by Christian — March 7, 2008 @ 12:04 pm
Are charm and sympathy phony and empty by definition? What are the specific qualities of charm and sympathy that make them inferior to the “real” virtues? Or are they just degraded because the Victorians liked them?
Comment by madhousewife — March 7, 2008 @ 12:12 pm
Eve - thank you for saying things perfectly for me–I can always rely on you!
madhousewife - I’ll endeavor to answer for Eve, since sometimes we seem to share a brain (although she has the larger percentage of smarts). Charm and sympathy –particularly charm–are surface virtues. There is nothing inherently wrong with them, but they are but surface reflections of deeper virtues like charity and emphathy. They are expressions, rather, and don’t necessarily tie to anything beneath the surface. I think this is the problem with the Angel–she is more phantom than reality, more “angel” than “woman,” and no one seems to care what’s really going on with her (whether it’s her own needs/wants or her virtues) as long as she appears (apparition-like) to be sympathetic, pure, and charmingly angelic.
berrykat (#6) - actually, from what I’ve read, the Angel stuff was first and most popular amongst the middle classes (which is always hard to define but doesn’t necessarily mean “not-poor”) and only later spread to the upper crust as Queen Victoria’s devotion to Albert became idealized.
Comment by EmilyS — March 7, 2008 @ 12:25 pm
Like Shaw pointed out, it’s the middle class, the professionals, that have usually been the source or backbone of morality in every culture. Not the idle decadent aristocracy.
Comment by Christian — March 7, 2008 @ 12:30 pm
#10 “She is also alive and well in Disney princess movies. Anyone else notice how the princess is always just so perfect in every way.” And, this has been one of the most successful marketing ideas Disney has come up with in recent years.
It was not uncommon to find depictions of women as powerful in Victorian Literature, and why not. Once her husband died Victoria ruled alone and for a very long time. Victorian literature taken in its totality, could likely providea balanced and nuanced picture of a real woman. The angel woman is a fantasy, just like Disney’s princesses.
Comment by Claudia — March 7, 2008 @ 1:01 pm
Thanks, Emily!
Here’s Barbara Welter’s classic piece, “The Cult of True Womanhood,” which describes how Victorian femininity translated in the U.S. Essentially, women were supposed to embody four major characteristics: purity, piety, domesticity, and submission. Purity meant not just no sex before marriage but no enjoyment of sex afterwards, as well as the DUTY of keeping the male sexual drive in check, since people believed that too frequent ejaculation would shorten a man’s lifespan. Domesticity wasn’t just keeping the floors swept, but accomplishing domestic art (complex needlepoint, Baltimore quilts, etc).
These expectations did not run across the board, however–only white women of a certain moneyed class were expected to be “True Women.” In fact, their very existence depended on women of color and poverty acting differently, since the admittedly confining and yucky pedestal rested on the already weighted shoulders of slaves, indentured workers, mill girls, etc. etc. etc.
Em, I’ve been reading a lot of this rhetoric lately and I’ll confess: there are days I have to rub my eyes to make sure it’s not a YW manual from my teen years. It’s been a little depressing. It depresses me not just because we sometimes tout hollow counterfeits of virtue as the real thing, but also because the class differentiation remains: the continued hegemony of the “ideal Mormon woman” image rests on the tired shoulders of the majority of actual Mormon women, who do not fit the narrow confines of a rubric in which one marries early, has many children, has sufficient money to be and finds fulfillment in a life as a SAHM, etc. etc. etc.
Eve, you are lovely and I love you.
Comment by Janet — March 7, 2008 @ 1:48 pm
Claudia, while I admit Victoria was a strong woman in many cases, she very much perpetuated the idea of woman as submissive and second class. In a class I took on Victorian literature, we read letters from Victoria herself where she mentioned her anomaly status and vented about the women who wanted the vote–something she thought was unnecessary. She was somewhat of a contradiction. She loathed pregnancy and childbirth (and was among the first to be drugged during labor), wrote to her daughters upon the birth of their children to lament with them over their station, yet did nothing to change things for the women at the time. She also backed laws that worsened the states of the poor women that berrykat mentions. The poetry, prose, and art of the time were loaded with these unrealistic ideals of womanhood. The women who did reach literary status during this time fought hard, up-hill battles and were still sometimes patronized by fellow writers and artists. So yes, I suppose you’re right that there were strong women during the Victorian period, but they were largely opposed by the powers that were.
Comment by Lessie — March 7, 2008 @ 4:12 pm
Uh…wow! Thanks for all the kind words. Just one minor correction: although we do often seem to share a brain, I definitely do not have more smarts than EmilyS
Comment by Eve — March 7, 2008 @ 9:43 pm
Great post– thanks EmilyS!
I have often wondered, if you pushed many women to honestly tell you how they judged other women on a daily basis what the response would be. I feel as women we are the ones most often guilty of holding each other to these haunting standards of the Angel. As a SAHM I will give examples of how I see this daily: a mother who pulls a mattress into her sick child’s room to take care of the child, but to allow the husband to sleep (modern day draft sitting perhaps?), an over-scheduled mother who is tirelessly on the run shuttling children back and forth between various activities, and the mother who admits she just needs to cut back somewhere, that she is breaking and needs more help. The first two will be praised for all of their sacrifice for their family, for being wonder women, while the last will be condemned for admitting weakness, and her complaints will often be ridiculed as reflecting badly on her husband. (I am using examples from the playground this week–I live no where near UT by the way).
In theory we discuss deeper qualities that magnify whatever a woman does, but in actual practice, I believe many women conduct themselves more like Queen Victoria, lamenting standards, expectations, and stereotypes, but continuously perpetuating the ideas in everyday activities and interactions.
Comment by Maybe — March 8, 2008 @ 7:34 am
I feel guilty for not being this and not wanting to be this. I wish I would be this and love it. But I know myself. I know who I am. Not to say that this woman does not. Just to say, this is not me.
Comment by jjbates26 — March 8, 2008 @ 10:47 am
I think Maybe has a great point in #19 about the part women play in perpetuating the angel in the house to their own detriment. I would say one of the most frustrating things I encounter in discussions of women’s issues is the way many women stubbornly defend modes of thought that work against their own well-being. Like Maybe, I encounter this all of the time. I’ve often thought that when it comes to motherhood and the ways women think, most critical comments (why doesn’t she have children? Why doesn’t she have more children? Why does she need help at home?) can be traced to the basic notion that misery loves company. I imagine that it would be pretty lonely to be an angel in the house, and I imagine that angels want all the company they can get.
I also think that these kinds of narratives are not unique to the Victorian era. They have resurfaced over time in various forms. Domestic management manuals of the mid twentieth-century, or the contemporary resurgence and popularity of media focusing on the household (ie Martha Stewart, goddess that she is!), or in our own LDS world, conference talks of the 70s and 80s, YW manuals, proclamations, “Women who Know,” etc…all fit this model. These texts are attempts to legitimate the household at historical moments when it appears that women might not want to stay put. These kinds of texts–usually written after radical social moments when it seemed that women might become more mobile–script a morality that requires women to stay home. These texts are very good at giving their own scripts the ultimate seal of approval: The will of heaven. Who doesn’t want to be an angel? And who, really, wants to be a woman who *doesn’t* know?! Jeez louise.
Comment by Sonnet — March 8, 2008 @ 12:10 pm
Lessie your point is well taken. There seems to be a disconnect even today of what individuals want for themselves and what might appear to be best for society. If you look at movies from the late 1930’s and early 1940’s women are portrayed as more independent and empowered where as women, especially on the Lifetime cable Chanel, are portrayed either as predators or victims. If they have a message, maybe they don’t, it is that women are not independent even when they aren’t victims. I think the directors of these flicks thinks they are showing how women solve problems, but that isn’t the way they come across.
Fascinating Womanhood. My sister swore by this book. She gave one to my mother who used it to level a piece of furniture by putting it under one of the legs.
Comment by Claudia — March 8, 2008 @ 4:45 pm
LOL! That is too funny. Also, I’m glad you weren’t offended by my comment. I re-read it and was afraid it came of too preachy (too bad I didn’t re-read it before submitting). Anyway, you’re right about the disconnect between individuals and society’s ideas about what individuals should do. It’s so confusing to watch different shows and be excited by the progress that I think we’re reaching at one moment and then realize how far we still have to go the next.
Comment by Lessie — March 8, 2008 @ 5:53 pm
I think Claudia’s point about the depiction of women in the media reinforces Sonnet’s point that this is still very much with us today. Some months ago we lost the Comedy Channel when our cable was repackaged, and gained Fox News, which is funnier than most things on the Comedy Channel anyway. They - and to a lesser extent, network news programs like PrimeTime Live and 20/20 and tabloid newspapers like the Post - seem fascinated by “women as victim” particularly when the woman in question is white and preferably blonde. What does this serve? Is it a way of trying to “keep us in our place” - See what will happen when you’re too independent! See what will happen when you decide to leave the private sphere! It’s frightening. It’s different to the Angel in the House, but I think they are related - the point is still to keep us safely confined to the private sphere.
Comment by Quimby — March 8, 2008 @ 8:27 pm
I was walking through the market with my husband one day, and we came to a stand by the “Landfrauen Verein”, and they had a booklet with recipes and quotes. My husband opened it up, and read a Quote: 50% of (married) Germans are happily married and they are envied by their wives.
Sometimes my husband describes me the way Patmore describes the “angel,” and I just roll my eyes. He has a very selective memory is all I can say to that. I have never sat in the draft. I have always made my husband do that, and I don’t eat darkmeat. I have, over the years, stopped yelling back (OK, I’m the one who does most of the yelling) at my husband when we argue because it is useless, and he usually figures out when he is being stupid - eventually. He is smart like that.
I agree with Liz in #4. I think somebody is speaking from a guilty conscience.
Comment by Emily Dawn — March 10, 2008 @ 4:01 am
Some women in my ward held Fascinating Womanhood workshops where you could learn and practice the techniques. I declined to attend. I did bring a copy to college with me though and my roommates and I would read passages to each other and hoot with laughter.
Comment by Chelsea — March 11, 2008 @ 11:32 pm
SOS
I’m a foreing learner of English and we ara studying The statue of women and the feminist mouvements during the victorian era. first of all,I’d like to thank you , you were very helpful . then, I will be very glad if you could give me more information about poets and writers who wrote at and about that period ( need more quotes ) THANK YOU IN ADVANCE .
Comment by Evette — January 12, 2009 @ 3:01 am