Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T13:36:11.940Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Persuading the navy home: Austen and professional domesticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Get access

Summary

In 1839, Sarah Ellis prefaced her lengthy meditation on Victorian domesticity and the condition of English women by pronouncing a truly oceanic sentence:

it seems an ungracious task to attempt to rouse [English young ladies] from their summer dreams; and were it not that wintry days will come, and the surface of life be ruffled, and the mariner, even she who steers the smallest bark, be put upon the inquiry for what port she is really bound – were it not that the cry of utter helplessness is of no avail in rescuing from the waters of affliction, and the plea of ignorance unheard upon the far-extending and deep ocean of experience, and the question of accountability perpetually sounding, like the billows of this lower world – I would be the last to call the dreamer back to a consciousness of present things.

In a periodic sentence that culminates in shameless paralepsis, the call to duty is deferred by waves of clauses – parentheticals, modifiers and participles – that wash English, and presumably female, readers away from the national shore of those “present things” that Ellis will later tell us consist of the economic hardships endemic to British capitalism. Yet even at sea in the billows of this extended metaphor, we cannot but notice that it is a she at the helm, a she who steers. If we convert the metaphor's equivalencies, it is hardly remarkable to see a woman presented at the head of her household, in charge of her own sphere.

Type
Chapter
Information
Professional Domesticity in the Victorian Novel
Women, Work and Home
, pp. 12 - 43
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×