On the Figure of the Fallen Woman

Detail from Dante Gabriel Rossetti's 

unfinished painting Found (1869)

Oil on canvas (36 x 32 in) [1]

 

 

I.

 

Due to a pair of unrelated incidents, both involving American women of my acquaintance, the figure of the fallen woman has never resonated more in my imagination than now. 

 

Whilst a woman might literally fall and break her nose on a cobbled street in Soho, or split her lip as she - again quite literally - trips and bangs her head against a wall in Reading, here I wish to remark on the figure of the fallen woman as a conceptual metaphor with theological overtones. 

 

It was a metaphor that was particularly prevalent in 19th-century Britain, where it described a woman who had lost her social and moral standing (often as a result of pre- or extra-marital sex) and was heading on a downward path into poverty and/or prostitution [2].  

 

 

II. 

 

I suppose the original (or prototypical) fallen woman, i.e., the first to lose her innocence and be tempted into sin; the first to fall from God's grace, was Eve, the fruit-picking mother of us all and red-headed ophidiophile.  

 

The question I have, therefore, is this: if modern women are all the daughters of Eve, all inherit her corrupt nature inclining them towards sinfulness, disobedience, and consorting with serpents, then how much further can they fall? 

 

Does it really matter if one has a bad reputation amongst men, when one already exists outside the covenant and under judgement from God? 

 

III.  

 

D. H. Lawrence would say that the Fall wasn't into wickedness, or even carnal knowledge per se, but into self-consciousness.

 

And, in a sense, I agree with him; the real problem - particularly today, in an increasingly narcissistic and solopsistic world - is that we have fallen victim "to the developmental exigencies" [3] of our own consciousness and become enchanted by our own image or reflection, isolating us from everyone and everything else (not just God). 

 

We live according to our ideals of self: and this becomes at last a fatal form of neurosis. 

 

 

IV.   

 

Putting this Lawrentian reading to one side, however, let us return to the Victorian usage of the term fallen which, interestingly, was one that applied to a variety of women in many different settings and circumstances; not just prostitutes (and rape victims), even if the term fallen was most often conflated with unauthorised sexual knowledge and activity.

 

As always in England, class is invariably a consideration: some upper-middle class men regarded all women of a lower socio-economic status to be in some sense fallen (drunk, dirty, disagreeable, and disreputable, even if not actually on the game) [4].    

 

And, although the English sometimes like to pride themselves on their eccentricity, in some cases a woman may have been branded as fallen simply because she was unconventional and well-educated (queer in the old-fashioned sense; meaning not only odd, but ruined as a woman who would one day make a good wife and mother). 

 

Or perhaps she liked to laugh just a little too loudly; or dance just a little too wildly - in each case attracting attention to herself and forgetting the golden rule within bourgeois society of modesty and decorum at all times.     

 

 

V.

 

For a certain type of man, the great thing about a fallen woman is that she needs him to pick her up!  

 

Rescue and rehabilitation were key words in the Victorian era; fallen women needed saving by upright men, motivated by religious conviction, noble intentions, and - no doubt - for the chance to associate with known prostitutes, many of whom were very young girls.   

 

It would, I suppose, be a crass generalisation to label all Victorian men who helped fallen women as perverts - no doubt their motivations were complex and varied, ranging from genuine philanthropic concern to a paternalistic desire to exercise power and authority - but I do have reservations about those, like Gladstone, who seem overly concerned with vice and female sexuality tied to notions of chastity and innocence, etc. [5]    

 

 

VI.

 

As might be expected, male artists and writers also had a penchant for fallen women; indeed, apart from the Bible, it was Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) that most shaped the cultural (and pornographic) imagination on this issue (although the Victorians liked to think of her as more a passive victim or poor unfortunate, than as a woman who actively embraced evil, making her all the easier for them to save).  

 

In Elizabeth Gaskell's novel Mary Barton (1848), the story of Esther - a working class woman living in Manchester who ends up working as a prostitute - illustrates how even good girls go bad in times of great poverty. 

 

Whilst readers were encouraged to recognise how socio-economic factors played a significant part in her downfall, Gaskell doesn't offer us a radical politics, choosing instead to promote Christian values as the way to solve life's problems and remain an upright citizen even when times are hard. Unfortunately, prayer and reciting scripture doesn't feed hungry mouths or put shoes on the feet of children.      

 

Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy also expressed their views on the topic of the fallen woman; the former even went so far as to set up a home for such poor creatures (Urania Cottage) [6], whilst in Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) the latter explores the consequences for a heroine who became a fallen woman as a result of being raped. 

 

Hardy, however, like Gaskell, ultimately couldn't fulfill the revolutionary implications of his own art due to the Victorian moral context he still worked within (whilst attempting to challenge such). D. H. Lawrence would suggest that Hardy's innate pessimism (and fatalism) didn't much help either.    

 

VII. 

 

By the mid-20th century, after the emancipation of women and their sexual activity was no longer associated so closely with moral corruption, the fallen woman as a theme had become irrelevant and, thankfully, faded from the popular imagination (even if ideas of innocence and experience; sin and redemption; vice and virtue, still bedevil us thanks to 2000 years of Christian moral culture). 

 

It's a romantic fantasy I know, but sometimes I long for the day when the snake will coil in peace about the ankle of Eve and the fruit of knowledge be finally digested; for a time when we can 'storm the angel-guarded gates and as victors travel to Eden home' [7], fallen creatures no longer, but risen beyond good and evil.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The theme of the fallen woman was becoming increasingly popular at the time that Dante Rossetti began this painting. Conceived in 1851, it was described by his niece Helen Rossetti as follows: 

      "A young drover from the country, while driving a calf to market, recognizes in a fallen woman on the pavement, his former sweetheart. He tries to raise her from where she crouches on the ground, but with closed eyes she turns her face from him to the wall."

      Cited in Timothy Hilton's The Pre-Raphaelites (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1970), p. 140.  

 

[2] That's not to downplay the significance of actually falling in a physical manner, which, along with poisoning, drowning, and road accidents, is a leading cause of accidental death (and personal injury) worldwide (particularly amongst the elderly). 

      As someone who once had a nasty fall in which I spiral fractured my right leg in four places, I can vouch for the fact that falls can happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere and that whether one slips, trips, stumbles, or faints in a heap, it is never fun to fall (particulary on to a hard surface or from a height of any kind). For bodies are surprisingly fragile and easily cut, bruised, and broken. 

      Interestingly, research shows that women (of all age groups) are more prone to falling than men and one wonders why that is; does gravity exert a greater pull upon them? Does possession of a penis help men stay upright and balanced?    

 

[3] Trigant Burrows, The Socal Basis of Consciousness (1927), quoted by D. H. Lawrence in his (extremely positve) review of this work; see Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 332.

 

[4] The reality in Victorian England was that for many lower class women prostitution was the only way to make ends meet during hard economic times. Most might best be described as transient fallen women, i.e., women who moved on and off the game as financial pressures dictated. See Anne Isba, Gladstone and Women (Continuum, 2006), p. 102.  

 

[5] The British statesman and politician William Gladstone (1809 - 1898) was a man who not only enjoyed his rescue work among prostitutes - many of whom he found physically attractive and knew by name - he also liked to read pornography and indulge in self-flagellation with a whip; we know this from his own diaries. 

      Thus, whilst Gladstone may have insisted on his fidelity to his wife - who bore him eight children - clearly she didn't satisfy his more exotic sexual tastes (which were a source of deep shame to him). And if he frequented the company of many prostitutes over the years, it clearly wasn't just from a sense of moral duty.    

      See H.C.G. Matthew's biography, Gladstone 1809 - 1874 (Clarendon Press, 1997). An excerpt frpm pages 90-95 can be read on The Victorian Web: click here. As Matthew concludes:

      "Gladstone's involvement with prostitutes was [...] in no way casual, nor was it merely charitable work which might equally have taken another form [...] The time spent on it, the obvious intensity of many of the encounters [...] show how at the centre of a Victorian family and religious life was a sexual situation of great tension." 

 

[6] Urania Cottage was what we would now call a women's shelter, but which the Victorians termed a Magdalene asylum. It was established in Shepherd's Bush in 1847 by Dickens and Angela Burdett-Coutts, one of the wealthiest women in England and a well-known philanthropist.

      I don't know what conditions were like at the hostel, but one imagines it was preferable to prison or the workhouse. Dickens explained to the residents - mostly prostitutes - that although they were fallen and degraded, they weren't lost and that they would be helped to return to happiness - provided they were good girls who worked hard and behaved themselves (no bad temper; no bad language; no bad conduct). Dickens also chose the reading material available to the women - and what dresses they should wear.  

       Over time, women admitted to the house became more varied; sex workers were joined girls convicted of crimes such as theft, and those who were guilty of nothing else other than being homeless or destitute. 

 

[7] I'm quoting from memory here from D. H. Lawrence's poem 'Paradise Re-entered', in the collection Look! We Have Come Through! (Chatto & Windus, 1917), which can be read online by clicking here. 

      The poem is found in Volume I of the Cambridge Edition of Lawrence's poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz (2013), on p. 197.

 

 

This post is for Lee Ellen and Jennifer.