The Angel out of the House: Philanthropy and Gender in Nineteenth-Century England

Introduction

Name /V2007/V2007_INT 12/19/01 06:04AM Plate # 0-Composite pg 1 # 1 Introduction The 1893 international exhibition, held in Chicago and dedicated to showcasing the achievements of the nineteenth century, featured a new and unique section devoted to ‘‘women’s work.’’ The contribution of Great Britain to this new department of the exhibition focused on women’s philanthropy and was organized, at the invitation of a Royal Commission, by the well-knownphilanthropistBaronessAngelaBurdettCoutts . The exhibit included a published report, a collection of ‘‘Congress Papers’’ by ‘‘Eminent Writers’’ entitled Woman’s Mission. In her preface to the report, the baroness writes: ‘‘It is fitting that the close of the nineteenth century should focus and illustrate in a definite form the share which women have taken in its development, of which, in my humble judgment, the truest and noblest, because the most natural, part, is to be found in philanthropic work.’’ Reflecting on the previous sixty years of British history, Burdett-Coutts credits women’s philanthropy, women’s ‘‘most natural’’ work, with raising the moral tone of the nation and significantly contributing to the amelioration of the social ills industrialization caused. The papers that make up Woman’s Mission stress the benevolent and sympathetic, but also efficient and professional, nature of the philanthropies they describe. ‘‘No feature of the single-handed work of women is more striking,’’ writes Burdett-Coutts, ‘‘than the wisdom Name /V2007/V2007_INT 12/19/01 06:04AM Plate # 0-Composite pg 2 # 2 and discretion with which it is generally conducted. Inspired by a largehearted benevolence, and warm sympathy with the poor and suffering, the majority of women workers in philanthropy have not allowed their feelings to obscure their judgment. They recognize that—‘The truly generous is the truly wise’’’ (285). Published two years earlier, a popular satire by an anonymous clergyman gives a different view of nineteenth-century women philanthropists . My District Visitors (1891) represents women who participate in parish charity work as either officious and overbearing or naive and gullible. Of KerenhappuchBlyte,‘‘SpinsterandProphetess,’’theclergymanwrites, ‘‘To set her down amongst our peace-loving denizens would be equivalent to introducing the hawk to thewood-pigeon’’;herself-authoredtractsand hectoring visits frighten not only the poor but the clergyman as well (16). Dolly Beniment, by constrast, is young, sexually attractive, and credulous; although a ‘‘most indefatigable visitor,’’ she is so trusting and indiscriminate with her charity that the clergyman has to spend much of his time undoing what she has done (32). The third visitor, Mistress Agatha Comfort, is likewise taken advantage of by the poor because of her generosity and old-fashioned assumptions about the respect and deference due her as the lady of the manor. Despite their enthusiasm and well-meaning intentions, the parson’s visitors either offend or are hoodwinked by the poor, and they require constant and careful supervision by the more judicious clergyman to keep them from doing more harm than good. Whether a domineering old maid, a pretty but silly young woman, or a patronizing Lady Bountiful, a philanthropic woman seems able to succeed only at ‘‘making herself an objectof derision’’(77). The figure of the philanthropic woman had long evoked such contradictory perceptions. Perhaps the most famous parodies of the strongminded woman philanthropist were the ‘‘telescopic philanthropist,’’ Mrs. Jellyby, and the ‘‘cast-iron Lady Bountiful,’’ Mrs. Pardiggle, in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House (1853), but many others appeared in print as well throughout the nineteenth century.1 An unsigned 1859 article in Fraser’s Magazine, for example, worried about the supposedly inevitable defeminization of women who became involved in philanthropic work. Entitled ‘‘A Fear for the Future, That Women Will Cease to Be Womanly,’’ the article describes a group of typical modern young women at a ball: 2 Introduction Name /V2007/V2007_INT 12/19/01 06:04AM Plate # 0-Composite pg 3 # 3 There are plenty of good-looking young ladies, whose toilette is not the most carefully arranged in the world. . . . They are in- fluential members of society; they are presiding influences of sundry Committees and Female Associations for the Alteration of This, the Abolition of That, or the Advancement of the Other. They write pamphlets, and issue manifestoes; they speak at crowded meetings, and take an ardent part in important controversies . They are not really young women—they are Public Persons. (246) The article writer’s description explicitly raises the threat that...