victorian men spitballing

So there are two men, these two interesting men, who are male leads, love interests, romantic heroes -- or at least, almost that -- who aren`t especially manly. We often think of Victorian heroes as "smoldering" dark figures, Bronte figures, men who only ever speak when they're giving commands. But what is interesting is that for sheer hopeless dedication, the two best-loved men in our course are terribly feminine; they are men loved better for their gentility than for their overbearing testosterone.

It is a bit of license to compare Miss Clack's crush on Godfrey Ablewhite to the devotion that Tess Durbeyfield holds for Angel Clare. But there are certain unavoidable parallels. Both women, for instance, invest their men with some ultimate Christian virtue: the charitable Godfrey who cures all with smiles and who can do no wrong, and the harp-playing, gentle-speaking Angel, who so cares for Tess. These men each have Christian pedigree, Godfrey through his life as a civic hero, and Angel as a purebred clergyman, a man whose disconnection with faith is more a transcendence of Christianity than a want of morals. They both involve themselves in lower or less-respected strata of their society, in Angel's appreciation for farm life, and in Godfrey's habit of charity work -- or, more importantly, the charity work of old ladies. In turn, they each become fantasies for the lower-class women they mingle with. They are often identified with gentleness virtue even when they do not display those traits.

For the manners and the senses of propriety hanging over their novels, Angel and Godfrey are the perfect men to be so idealized, displaying in social graces what they can be said to lack in virality. Mr. Ablewhite, for instance, commits a grandiose act of martyrdom in burning his letter of exoneration, and Mr. Clare makes a scene of chivalry when he carries the four milkmaids across the stream. When women are attracted to these men, it shows them buying into the social rules and expectations that they represent -- possibly, it can be said, out of class aspirations. Miss Clack, who badly wants attention from her relatives, might like to be a "man about town" or a newspaper hero the way Godfrey is. Tess, who has always lived in service to her parents or her villainous "cousin," might like the class freedom that allows Angel to follow dairy-work as a test-career, to choose his own path and move on when he likes. Not just the fact of status, but the positions of these statused men, shows that they hold privileges lacked by their admirers.

Ultimately, neither man shows himself at all trustworthy or heroic. Independent of his legal troubles, Godfrey Ablewhite scoffs at Miss Clack when he thinks she isn't watching, and he {does something to cancel out his charity work in the last third of the book}. And Angel, when confronted with a harmless secret of his under-class wife, finds himself to be completely disillusioned by the common life he was invested in -- this is, his own sense of Victorian propriety trumps his love for Tess and his ability to do right. By betraying the women who love them, these characters reveal themselves to be the projections of kind-hearted, civilized gentlemen, rather than the genuine articles. This evidence of hypocrisy in the mannered Victorian upper-class fits exactly into the post-colonial moral conclusions of The Moonstone, and it fits comfortably into the punishing fatalism that underlies Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

Angel Clare and Godfrey Ablewhite are both characterized by gentility and gentleness together, earning them the hopeless devotion of the vulnerable lower-class women they meet. As they disappoint the reader, these characters function, on behalf of their novels, to refute Victorian ideals and hierarchies.