Gender and Performativity in 19th-Century English Novels

Introduction: Butler's Gender Performativity and the Female Novelist

The question of gender in the nineteenth-century English novel is complicated by more recent late-twentieth-century theorizing on the subject. In particular, Judith Butler's highly influential notion of "gender performativity" suggests that gender is, in itself, nothing more than a kind of act. This becomes an interesting angle from which to approach the works of creative artists, since a female novelist will quite naturally imagine her way into all sorts of characters who are not necessarily female. Although much has been made, for example, of Jane Austen's modest refusal in her fiction to depict the conversations of men without a lady present, it is noteworthy that many other female novelists of the nineteenth century show a willingness to imaginatively inhabit different persons — and this willingness is, in many ways, the readiest approach to the subject of gender as metaphor.

Frankenstein and the Fantasy of Male Childbirth

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein offers a convenient place to begin. Certainly no one would suspect Shelley of ignorance of what would pass for feminist sentiment in 1818, the year of the novel's publication. Shelley's mother was, after all, Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman — perhaps the clearest critique of the status of women to emerge from the late Enlightenment. Yet Frankenstein does not present a broad variety of female characters. While willing to ventriloquize the voices of several male protagonists (the captain Walton, who narrates the frame story; then Victor Frankenstein; then even the monster himself in the inset narrative of Chapters 11 and following), Shelley places the novel's only noteworthy female character in a subsidiary role — there mostly to provide the monster's instrument of vengeance against his creator.

This superficial unconcern with female subjectivity on Shelley's part should not, however, be taken as a sign of disinterest in gender as a subject. The real subject of Frankenstein would appear to be the novel's fantasy of male childbirth. If it is astonishing to a modern reader to think that Frankenstein was written by a nineteen-year-old woman, it is perhaps even more astonishing to recall that, by nineteen, Mary Shelley had already given birth twice — with the first child dying after a few weeks, inducing severe postpartum depression in the mother. It is worth recalling that childbirth is regarded by Simone de Beauvoir as the most basic fact upon which patriarchal power structures are built:

"Fecundation can occur without any pleasure being felt by the woman. But fecundation by no means represents for her the completion of the sexual process; on the contrary, her service to the species only begins at this point: it is fulfilled slowly and painfully, in pregnancy, childbirth, and lactation. 'Anatomic destiny' is thus profoundly different in man and woman, and no less different is their moral and social situation. Patriarchal civilization dedicated women to chastity; it recognized more or less openly the right of the male to sexual freedom, while woman was restricted to marriage." (De Beauvoir, 374)

Consequently, Frankenstein's insistent focus on its male characters — all of whom are involved in the process of bringing a new life into the world, whether as creator or created — seems less an evasion of feminist concerns and more an attempt to force a prospective male readership into consideration of their implications. This becomes apparent in the scene relatively early in the narrative where Frankenstein finally succeeds in bringing his creature to life. Victor tells us that he "had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body" — this would seem to correspond roughly to the amount of time the nineteen-year-old Shelley had spent pregnant (Shelley, V).

What is most fascinating about Victor Frankenstein, however, is the emotional journey he undergoes: "I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep" (Shelley, V). In other words, success in his endeavor leads only to a sensation of horror, followed by a bizarre nightmare in which his fiancée transforms into his dead mother's corpse, whereupon he is awakened by the monster and abandons it in disgust. This central rejection — and the consequent revenge taken upon Frankenstein by the monster — seems like Mary Shelley's conscious attempt to force male subjectivities to try on, somewhat performatively, the experience of motherhood.

Catherine Earnshaw's Identification and Gender in Wuthering Heights

If Butler's notion of the performativity of gender suggests one way in which Shelley's male-centered story is still being used to express central feminist concerns, it is worth noting that the female subjectivities depicted in other nineteenth-century English novels frequently carry an element of performativity as well. Perhaps one of the most famous examples comes from Wuthering Heights, where Catherine's famous expression of her love for Heathcliff is framed in terms of pure identification:

"My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. — My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don't talk of our separation again…" (Emily Brontë, IX)

In this sense, the identity of the female protagonist is not merely dependent upon the central male figure, but extends to a quality of identification with him. It is worth noting that this identification also crucially incorporates the non-human natural world — everything that is not culturally determined. Basch notes that Catherine's statement is not hyperbolic, as the logic of the novel demonstrates that "by denying momentarily within herself her passion for Heathcliff, by abandoning him and Nature, of which she is an organic part, Cathy brings about her own destruction" (Basch 91).

Works Cited

Basch, Françoise. Relative Creatures: Victorian Women in Society and the Novel. New York: Schocken, 1974. Print.

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. 1847. Web. Accessed 22 April 2014.

Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. 1847. Web. Accessed 22 April 2014.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print.

De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Translated by H. M. Parshley. New York: Vintage, 1989. Print.

Gilbert, Sandra and Gubar, Susan. The Madwoman in the Attic. Second Edition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Print.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Web. Accessed 22 April 2014.

Wood, Ellen. East Lynne. 1861. Web. Accessed 22 April 2014.