In Jane Eyre, the beautiful and blonde coquette is Jane's cousin Georgiana Read. This is another figure, not liked by Jane, and (unlike Ginevra) neglected by critics.
Georgiana's story is interesting in the novel: she nearly finds happiness with some young and handsome aristocrat, but her elopement with him is stopped by her sister Eliza. Not having too much money after their mother's death, Georgiana marries a rich, older man -- not old, simply older. However, her chances of happiness are not great.
Georgiana exemplifies the few opportunities afforded young and pretty women of the upper class if they happened to lose their money. Forced by poverty, Jane herself had to learn to work from an early age. This does not happen to Georgiana. When she does lose her money, her artistic and fashion talents have gone completely wasted and her only chance to survive is through marriage.
The Georgiana sub-plot is minor in Jane Eyre. However, Jane does not dislike Georgiana, and Eliza, who dislikes them both, is a bad and unsympathetic character. Between the two sisters, Georgiana (kind and pretty, but useless) and Eliza (unkind, cold but hard-working) we are meant to prefer the former.
Victorian literature is full of young women with beauty and artistic talents, who simply had no place in the Victorian world, and they either had to marry or fade into obscurity.
The pretty Victorian coquettes were the subject of my PhD; coquetry and beauty is the subject of my research since. More amazing posts on beauty coming soon!
Have a great day and be well! :-)
P.S. Thanks to the reader who gave me the idea to write this post. I cannot find a way to reply to comments (I am still not that good with the blog format. I have The Lipstick Papers as a FB page though, and I can answer comments there).
Ah, so you *have* now written about Georgiana Reed. How wonderful! I strongly agree that this character has been unforgivably slighted by the critics; I find much more to her story than a simple overindulgence-vs.-self-denial binary with her sister Eliza. One senses greater interest on the author's part (despite herself) in Georgiana, leading to the extended interlude between Jane and Georgiana -- which is, to my mind, a kind of trial run for the Lucy/Ginevra relationship, Georgiana unquestionably being a prototype of Ginevra. Indeed, one cannot shake the perception that both characters, Jane and Lucy, beneath their superficial and insisted-upon censure of these opulent blonde volupteuses, actually, deep down, on some level, wish that they could give free rein to their own suppressed appetites (of all sorts), as these coquettes so comfortably do.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, I'm intrigued by the fact that you did a PhD thesis on such characters. To be sure, it's an under-investigated field. You might consider self-publishing that thesis (assuming that you don't get a publisher interested in it). Interlibrary loan is a pain, and I'm sure that more than a few people would be interested in the subject matter.
Oh, and here's one more character who might be worth considering along these lines: Adele Ratignolle, from The Awakening. In her physical description, Adele embodies precisely the same type as Georgiana and Ginevra, and is emphatically presented as being ultra-feminine, in comparison to Kate Chopin's more vaguely tomboyish main character.
My only departure from your vision: these specific fashion image don't quite evoke Georgiana for me. I'd sooner relate her to your own Ginevra drawing.
Hi Karsten, thanks for your comments! Yes, I am trying to get my thesis published, the book proposal is nearly ready. Hopefully I will send it before summer. If you are interested in an interlibrary loan, the thesis is in the University of Exeter. I totally agree with what you say about Georgiana and Ginevra! Ginevra is by far my favorite character in the Bronte oeuvre, with Rosalie Murray from Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey coming second. If you haven't ready Agnes Grey, don't, it's a horrible book, but an excellent example of how Victorian dominant discourse treated coquettes. I have published an edited collection on beauty with CSP, Maria Ioannou (that's me) and Maria Kyriakidou eds., Female Beauty in Art: History, Feminism and Women Artists. I have written the first two chapters, and the chapter on Villette fully expands my Ginevra theory ;-)
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