Felix Holt and the Family (Blog 3)

For this blog post, I am taking advantage of the opportunity to write about something that interests us in the readings rather than to answer one of the posted questions.

What struck me during Felix Holt and the “Address” which follows is the undercurrent question of family planning/contraception. Throughout the novel, the question of marriage and children is addressed a couple of times by Felix, such as in chapters V and XXII. In chapter V, he says “I’ll never marry, though I should have to live on raw turnips to subdue my flesh. I’ll never look back and say…‘but pray excuse me, I have a wife and children—I must lie and simper a little, else they’ll starve’” (74). Initially, I did not think much of this statement beyond the fact that it further characterized Felix’s need for an honest living and independence, something he found incompatible with married life. The point is brought up again by Mrs. Holt in Esther’s presence in chapter XXII: “here’s Felix made a common man of himself, and says he’ll never be married—which is the most unreasonable thing, and him never easy but when he’s got a child on his lap” (226). Felix points out that liking children is no reason on its own to get married and procreate, particularly because once children are born they can “do mischief, brag and cant for gain or vanity,” once again linking children to a life lower than that which Felix aspires to (226).

During the “Address” however, “Felix” points out to the workers that many people of all classes “seem to think it a light think to beget children, to bring human beings with all their tremendous possibilities into this difficult world, and then take little heed how they are disciplines and furnished for the perilous journey they are sent on without any asking of their own” (496). This turns the question children away from the incompatibility of their existence with that of their parents leading a virtuous life to a question of the responsibility parents have for brining another human being into the world. “Felix” goes on to say that “This is a sin…which, like taxation, fall[s] heaviest on the poorest” (496). “Felix” goes on to make an argument for the necessity of educating the children of the poor “so as not to go on recklessly breeding a moral pestilence among us” (497). While the need for education is returned to by “Felix,” it is only after a steady focus on the question of how the poor care for their children and it is always the collective noun “children” rather than “child.” In the novel, we learn that Felix is the only surviving child, but that his mother had several other children. Little Job is an only child, but he is also an orphan. Otherwise, the only families we see in detail are those of middle and upper class families, each of which have one to three children. In this, I find Eliot drawing attention to family size in relation to class, however unintentionally that may be.

A quick search of JSTOR and the MLA International Bibliography did not pull up any articles that seemed to bring Eliot/Felix Holt and questions of family size/family planning/contraceptives together. I have only the barest knowledge of family planning/family size control options available during this era and I am completely unaware if Eliot ever commented on questions of family planning. As such cannot comment much further except to say that any opinions/thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.