Healing the Wounds of War: (a)mending the national narrative in the historical publications of Charlotte M. Yonge
2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 20; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/09612025.2011.622530
ISSN1747-583X
Autores Tópico(s)Literature: history, themes, analysis
ResumoAbstract This article examines a little-known historical novel—Grisly Grisell (1893)—by a minor writer, Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823–1901), arguing that Yonge here redefines the dominant national narrative by presenting an apparently ‘feminised’ history—focused on gradual cultural development and familiar, local and domestic in emphasis—which at once interrogates and complements the ‘high political’ history of the court and war. Her articulation of this alternative historical perspective in her other later historical publications and within the context of the Tory Romantic historiographical tradition, a potentially patriarchal discourse which influenced and was influenced by both male and female writers, will demonstrate that the concept of a ‘feminised’ narrative remains problematic, and the engendered character of the text may rest in the response of nineteenth-century readers. The article concludes by comparing Yonge's attempt to produce a complementary, a richer and, a more comprehensive version of the national past with J. R. Green's A Short History of the English People (1874), a work which demonstrates that ‘feminised’ approaches to the national past were not confined to women writers (or, indeed, Tory Romantic historians). Notes D. Looser (2000) British Women Writers and the Writing of History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press), p. 8. M. E. Burstein (2004) Narrating Women's History in Britain, 1770–1902 (Aldershot: Ashgate), p. 3. See, for instance, A. F. Lucy (1965) The Other Miss Yonge, in G. Battiscombe & M. Laski (Eds) A Chaplet for Charlotte Yonge (London: Cresset Press), pp. 90–97; M. P. Johnson (1999)The King, the Priest and the Armorer: a historical fantasy of the Victorian Via Media', Clio, 28(4), pp. 399–413; Rosemary A. Mitchell (2000) Picturing the Past: English history in text and image, 1830–1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 248–260; S. Walton (2006) Charlotte M. Yonge and the ‘Historic Harem’ of Edward Augustus Freeman, Journal of Victorian Culture, 11(2), pp. 226–255. Edmund Burke, Walter Scott, Robert Southey and Thomas Carlyle all played a role in the foundation of this historiographical perspective, of which there is no definitive study. It was often linked to medievalism, for which see A. Chandler (1971) A Dream of Order: the medieval ideal in nineteenth-century English literature (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul), and M. Girouard (1981) The Return to Camelot: chivalry and the English gentleman (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), as well as more recent studies such as C. Brooks (1999) The Gothic Revival (London: Phaidon) and M. Alexander (2007) Medievalism: the Middle Ages in modern England (New Haven: Yale University Press). See, for instance, J. Burrow (1981) A Liberal Descent: Victorian historians and the English past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); P. B. M. Blaas (1978) Continuity and Anachronism: parliamentary and constitutional development in Whig historiography and in the anti-Whig reaction between 1890–1930 (The Hague: Nijhoff); E. Jones (1998) The English Nation: the great myth (Stroud: Sutton). The celebration of the Anglo-Saxons as the originators of civic liberties and a tradition of constitutionalism formed a key element in this historiographical approach: see R. Horsman (1976) Origins of Racial Anglo-Saxonism in Great Britain before 1850, Journal of the History of Ideas, 37(3), pp. 387–410; C. A. Simmons (1990) Reversing the Conquest: history and myth in nineteenth-century British literature (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press); B. Melman (1991) Claiming the Nation's Past: the invention of an Anglo-Saxon tradition, Journal of Contemporary History, 26(4), pp. 576–595. G. Kucich (2000) Romanticism and the Re-gendering of Historical Memory, in J. M. Labbe (Ed.) Memory and Memorials, 1789–1914: literary and cultural perspectives (London: Routledge), pp. 1–29 (p. 22; p. 25). R. Maitzen (1995) ‘This Feminine Preserve': historical biographies by Victorian women, Victorian Studies, 38(3), pp. 371–393 (p. 376, p. 380, p. 382). C. M. Yonge (1894) Grisly Grisell, or the Laidly Lady of Whitburn: a tale of the War of the Roses (London: Macmillan & Co.; first published 1893), pp. 1–11. Ibid., pp. 12–25. Ibid., pp. 37–42. Ibid., pp. 43–56. Ibid., pp. 63, 75. Ibid., 27, 84–86. A possible source for ‘The Marriage of Sir Gawaine’ is Thomas Percy (1906) Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, ed. E. Rhys (London: J. M. Dent & Co.; first published 1765), II, pp. 195–203, 403–411. However, a version of the legend appears in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as the Wife of Bath's Tale. Much earlier, in a letter of April 1854 to Jemima Blackburn, Yonge confessed to a ‘hankering for the loathly lady’; she also mentions the ‘Percy ballads’ in this letter. See Yonge, Grisly Grisell, pp. 61–73, and C. Mitchell, E. Jordan & H. Schinske (Eds) (2007–) The Letters of Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823–1900) (2007–), p. 137, online at SAS-Space E-repository, http:hdl.handle.net/10065/337. Yonge, Grisly Grisell, pp. 51–54, 62–63. Ibid., pp. 97–99. Ibid., pp. 104–108. Ibid., p. 110, p. 112–14, pp. 116. Ibid., pp. 118–125. Ibid., pp. 127–136. Ibid., pp. 137–149. Ibid., p. 150. See R. Browning (1899) The Poetical Works of Robert Browning (London: Smith, Elder & Co.), II, p. 752: the ballad appeared in the collection Asolando: Fancies and Facts (1889). J. G. Lockhart (1914) Memoirs of Sir Walter Scott (London: Macmillan & Co., first published 1837–38), I, pp. 305–311. Yonge recalled that Lockhart's biography was ‘an absolute delight to me’ in her youth: C. Coleridge (1903) Charlotte Mary Yonge: her life and letters (London: Macmillan & Co.), p. 113. Yonge, Grisly Grisell, pp. 153–176. Ibid., pp. 178–181. Ibid., pp.185–204. Ibid., pp. 203–212. Ibid., p. 220. Ibid., pp. 196–197, 225–227. Ibid., pp. 228, 247–248. Ibid., p. 228. Ibid., pp. 107, 119, 188–189, 265. Ibid., pp. 256, 278. Ibid., p. 257. Ibid., p. 271. Ibid., pp. 289–296. Ibid., p. 292. Ibid., pp. 297–300. G. Budge (2007) Charlotte M. Yonge: religion, feminism, and realism in the Victorian novel (Bern: Peter Lang), pp. 239–240. As the daughter and sister of army officers, Yonge certainly did not dismiss military heroism. See Coleridge, Yonge, pp. 20–31, 186–187. C. M. Yonge (1879) A Book of Golden Deeds of All Times and All Lands (London: Macmillan & Co.; first published 1864), pp. 1–9. Ibid., pp. 12–14, 211–218, 433–434. C.M. Yonge (2007) The Pigeon Pie (United States: Dodo Press; first published 1860), pp. 1–8. Ibid., pp. 9–10. Ibid., pp. 20–24, 29–35. Ibid., pp. 39–44. Ibid., pp. 55–59. Ibid., pp. 60–67. Ibid, pp. 75–77. C. M. Yonge (2007) The Constable's Tower; or, the Times of the Magna Carta (United States: Dodo Press; first published 1891), pp. 9–11, 43–46, 55–56, 72–76, 78, 105–112. Ibid., pp. 32–33, 96–97. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., pp. 2, 43. Ibid., pp. 34–37. Ibid., pp. 42–46. Ibid., p. 78. Ibid., pp. 83–89. Ibid., p. 99. Ibid., preface. These include Langley School (1850), Friarswood Post Office (1860) and Langley Little Ones (1882). Note also Old Times at Otterbourne (1891) and An Old Woman's Outlook in a Hampshire Village (1892), which also present a localised perspective. Chantry House (1886) also presents an autobiographically inspired picture of the reform of a village community by an incoming gentry family. Coleridge, Yonge, pp. 1–36. C. M. Yonge (2007) John Keble's Parishes: a history of Hursley and Otterbourne (United States: Dodo Press; first published 1898), preface. Ibid. Ibid., p. 17. Ibid., p. 22. Ibid., pp. 23–25. H. F. Tucker (2008) Epic: Britain's heroic muse, 1790–1910 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 487–489. Yonge's quotation is from the poem ‘At Hursley in Marden’: Cromwell's retreat from history was contextualised with celebrations of more conventional seventeenth-century heroes such as Prince Rupert. Yonge, Keble's Parishes, pp. 48–56, 60–65. Ibid., p. 75. Ibid., pp. 66–71. Coleridge, Yonge, pp. 40–55, 80–81. C. M. Yonge (n.d.) The Carbonels (London: National Society's Depository; first published 1895), pp. 13–16. Ibid., pp. 178–180. Ibid., pp. 150–157. Ibid., pp. 185–209. Ibid., pp. 251, 259–162. Ibid., pp. 267–270. C. M. Yonge (1888) Hannah More (London: W. H. Allen & Co.), pp. 13–64. Ibid., pp. 78–100. Ibid., pp. 28–29. Ibid., pp. 110–122. A. De Gruchy (2007) Continuity and Development in the Fiction of Charlotte Yonge, in J. Courtney & C. Schultze (Eds), Characters and Scenes: studies in Charlotte M. Yonge (Abingdon: Beechcroft Books), p. 34. C. M. Yonge, The Kings of England (London: Macmillan & Co., 1852), p. iii. C. M. Jackson-Houlston (1999) Ballads, Songs and Snatches: the appropriation of folk song and popular culture in British nineteenth-century realist prose (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 13–50. Mitchell, Picturing the Past, pp. 248–259 (p. 259). Ironically, the legend used in this novel is in fact a Greek one, the tale of Cupid and Psyche. C. M. Yonge (1926) The Prince and the Page: a story of the last crusade (London: Macmillan & Co.; first published 1866), pp. 1–40. Ibid., pp. 41–86. Ibid., pp. 210–259. Ibid., p. ix. Yonge notes her alterations from the ballad version of the story, which she is most likely to have read in Percy, Reliques, II, pp. 30–40. Yonge, The Prince and the Page, pp. 192–209. Ibid., p. viii. Ibid., p. 176. C. M. Yonge (2007) The Herd Boy and his Hermit (United States: Dodo Press; first published 1900), p. 130. Ibid., p. 35. Ibid., pp. 41–57. Ibid., pp. 58–72, 91–102, 115–119. Ibid., p. 115. Ibid., pp. 1–5, 120–127. Percy, Reliques, I, pp. 303–314. Yonge makes her allusion to the ballad very clear, not only by using lines from it to head chapters 22 and 23, but also by entitling chapter 23 ‘The Nut-Brown Maid’, pp. 122–128. Ibid., pp. 122, 128–130. See S. Bann (1995) Romanticism and the Rise of History (New York: Twayne), Mitchell, Picturing the Past, esp. pp. 13–19, and R. Fleming (1995) Picturesque History and the Medieval in Nineteenth-Century America, American Historical Review, 100(4), pp. 1061–1094 for definitions of picturesque history. B. G. Smith (1998) The Gender of History: men, women and historical practice (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press), pp. 103–129, 185–212. See also M. Spongberg (2002) Writing Women's History since the Renaissance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 150–171. Smith, Gender of History, pp. 157, 171. J. Thirsk (1996) Women Local and Family Historians, in D. Hey (Ed.) The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 498–504. See, for example, Charlotte Fell Smith (1851–1937), Mary Helen Alicia Stapleton (1837–1918), Frances Parthenope Verney (1819–90), and Margaret Maria Verney (1844–1930) in The Oxford DNB. B. G. Smith (1984) The Contribution of Women to Modern Historiography in Great Britain, France, and the United States, 1750–1940, American Historical Review, 89, pp. 718–721; R. A. Mitchell (1996), A Stitch in Time? Women, Needlework, and the Making of History in Victorian Britain, Journal of Victorian Culture, 1(2), pp. 185–202. See, for example, Hannah Lawrance (1795–1875), Fanny Bury Palliser (1805–78), and Jessie Bedford (1852/53–1918) in The Oxford DNB, for examples of women historians focusing on women's cultural roles, or examining social and cultural topics. C. R. Sherman & A. M. Holcomb (Eds) (1981) Women as Interpreters of the Visual Arts, 1820–1979 covers Victorian women art historians, while M. Berg (1992) The First Women Economic Historians, Economic History Review, 45, pp. 308–29 and M. Berg (1996) A Woman in History: Eileen Power, 1889–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) offer coverage of early twentieth-century women social and economic historians. For examples of women folklorists and literary scholars, see, for example, Charlotte Burne (1850–1923), Alice, Lady Gomme (1853–1938), Augusta, Lady Gregory (1852–1932), Christina Jamieson (1864–1942), Jessie Saxby (1842–1940), and Jessie Weston (1850–1928) in The Oxford DNB. There are also case studies of women folklorists—individual and generic—in the journal Folklore. There has been less attention to the role of Victorian women scholars in the development of English literary studies, but the work of Lucy Toulmin Smith (1838–1911) for the Early English Text Society offers one marginal example: see A. Laurence (2000) Women Historians and Documentary Research: Lucy Aikin, Agnes Strickland, Mary Anne Everett Green, and Lucy Toulmin Smith, in J. Bellamy, A. Laurence & G. Perry (Eds), Women, Scholarship and Criticism: gender and knowledge, c. 1790–1900 (Manchester: Manchester University Press), pp. 125–142. A. Brundage (1994) The People's Historian: John Richard Green and the writing of history in Victorian England (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press), pp. 5–6. Brundage, People's Historian, pp. 133–157. See also The Oxford DNB on Kate Norgate, and S. S. Holton (2002) Gender Difference, National Identity, and Professing History: the case of Alice Stopford Green, History Workshop Journal, 53(1), pp. 119–127. Brundage, People's Historian, pp. 2–3, 73–99. Quoted in ibid., p. 76. Ibid., p. 77. Walton, Yonge, p. 245. J. R. Green (1878), A Short History of the English People (London: Macmillan & Co.; first published 1874), p. 282. Ibid., pp. 284–294. Walton, Yonge, p. 246. M. E. Burstein (1998) ‘The Reduced Pretensions of the Historic Muse’: Agnes Strickland and the commerce of women's history, Journal of Narrative Technique, 28(3), pp. 219–242. Additional informationNotes on contributorsRosemary Mitchell Rosemary Mitchell is Associate Principal Lecturer in History, Reader in Victorian Studies, and Director of the Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies at Leeds Trinity University College. She is the author of Picturing the Past: English history in text and image, 1830–1870 (Clarendon Press, 2000), and has contributed over 140 articles to The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), including many on nineteenth-century women writers of non-fiction, such as Agnes Strickland and Elizabeth Eastlake. She is currently writing a monograph on constructions of gender and domesticity in Victorian historical cultures, and she also has research interests in Victorian historical comedy and the historical publications of Charlotte M. Yonge.
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