The January-May Marriage in Nineteenth-Century British Culture (review)

In her discussion of intergenerational marriages in nineteenth-century British culture, Esther Godfrey forcefully conveys the ubiquity of the theme. An initial chapter traces the evolution of representations of marriages between older men and younger women in works by Chaucer, Shakespeare, and eighteenth-century dramatic literature, concluding with a more detailed reading of Don Juan (1819–24). Following chapters turn to the Victorian period, delving into the subject in relation to an interesting set of issues: the creepy threat of incest invoked by the recurring plot of a young woman who marries a suitor "old enough to be her father"; the visual depiction, in paintings and narratives, of power relations between the married couple; the convergence of gothic conventions and the intergenerational marriage; the financial transactions and valuations that underlie the union of youthful female beauty and aging male prestige; and, finally, stories of older men who sacrifice their own desire for the benefit of their beloveds.

As she discusses each of these interesting topics, Godfrey conveys a broad and searching knowledge of primary sources. Novels by Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and other canonical domestic novelists receive due attention, but they share the page with paintings and illustrations, sensation fiction and vampire tales. The diversity of primary sources generally enlivens the book and deepens our appreciation for the extent to which the theme captured the attention of nineteenth-century British writers and painters.

Throughout her book Godfrey provides extensive and compelling discussion of the theme as it arises in artistic works. Her effort to provide historical context is much less satisfying. In the first chapter, as she turns attention from the long literary tradition of January-May marriages, Godfrey "maintains that the popularity of this theme in the nineteenth century emerges in response to numerous social, industrial, and economic factors that heightened anxieties concerning the identities of men and women" (32). After an initial paragraph on Mary Wollstonecraft, the discussion of these factors becomes increasingly tangential to the subject of the book. The amount of attention devoted to concern about working-class gender identity is especially curious in light of the plots she proceeds to examine. Godfrey misses an opportunity here to give readers analysis of the social and cultural contexts that more specifically reflect Victorian attitudes toward middle-class marriage.

Godfrey effectively positions her argument as a response to feminist criticism that has tended to treat patriarchal entitlement as a form of power that operated with ruthless efficiency to transform nineteenth-century women into passive victims. Shaped by this assumption, criticism has, she claims, overemphasized the extent to which novels and other cultural artifacts deprive female characters of agency. One might well argue, for example, that Dickens constructs Amy Dorrit as a self-effacing heroine who obediently fulfills the role of a good girl. Dutifully serving first her father and then a fatherly lover, she cheerfully subordinates her own desires to older and wiser men. Although Godfrey grants the force of such readings, she rightly holds that they exaggerate the passivity of young heroines and neglect sources of agency located in their erotic desire and, in some cases, the financial acumen with which they play the sexual market. Representations of the January-May romance are particularly interesting, she asserts, because they inevitably bring such complexities into view. Rather than upholding the gender hierarchy of patriarchal culture, the extensive age difference between groom and bride calls it into question. The presumably passive "young wives emerge as vital, active beings who consciously, sometimes forcefully, pursue or resist the affections of men" (8). As Godfrey reminds us, Little Dorrit cultivates the interest of her chosen spouse and eventually proposes to him.

The January-May Marriage thus pursues crucial insights about the extent to which nineteenth-century patriarchal culture doubted the very myths that sustained it. If the passivity of women turns out to be a precarious notion, so too does the stability and legitimacy of male...