"there's a sort of worth in the man beyond his class" (CH.23)

“there’s a sort of worth to the man beyond his class”

In asking the question of class of both Felix and Edith, I find myself drawing lines in the proverbial class status sand. If trying to give a hard and fast answer to what class Felix Holt is according to evidence from the book, I would quickly conclude that he is of the working class. The reader is given to understand that his father was in the trade of quack doctoring in selling his miracle and prayed over (and therefore not dishonest) tonics that helped cure people high and low (Ch.3). The sales from this tonic helped send Felix away for an education. However, it is clear that it was not the education that his family had quite intended. In Ch.4, we learn that Felix gave up his apprenticeship, which we can assume was to an apothecary of sorts, and used the money to pursue an education in Glasgow. While his mother’s hope was that this education would lead him to hopefully become a doctor since he would “have more schooling than his father,” he chose to work with his hands and pick up an honest trade in watchmaking and repairing in addition to using his education to teach children of his own class (Ch.22).

In Edith’s case, the mystery of class is more confused and the web harder to pull apart. Being raised by her clerical step-father, Rufus Lyon, the reader would assume that Edith is the same class. When it comes to the class of pastors and their families, I find it safe to say they are middle-class because, although they have no land, they are educated, do not work in a ‘laboring’ trade, and are looked up to by the working masses. In Mr. Lyon’s case though, he is a Dissenting preacher, and therefore not appointed by the Church of England. In that case, his class might be questionable. Still based on education and place in the community, a bet on the middle-class seems safe. Edith, herself, is well educated since she was sent off to a, importantly Protestant (wouldn’t want any French radicalism to accidentally sink in), boarding school in France. However, it appears that both Edith’s mother and father were from better established families. Edith’s deceased father, Maurice Christian Bycliff, had a claim at Harold’s title that he may, from the maniacal work of Jermyn, have been cheated out of. This of course means that Edith would have been the child of landed gentry. In this case, no longer would would she then be considered middle-class, but upper-class.

However, I do find that these lines of class are purposefully drawn in the sand by brilliant Eliot. Class is set up to be questioned all throughout. While Felix is set up in detail to be a man of the working class, his political ideas, his speech, his behavior (controlled drinking) and his education (although decidedly not his manner of dress) marks him out as middle-class. In addition, he is looked up to by working class men, Edith, and conceived as an equal by Mr. Lyon. The winds must be moving his line. In Edith’s case, while she is set in the middle-class by being raised by her father, her movements, the lines of her neck, her dress, and her gold accessories set her to be part of at least a better off middle-class if not gentry.

What I find interesting in all of these is that class is, whether known or unknown to the party itself, hidden, almost costumed. Mannerisms and behavior are portrayed as the best indicator of status. In thinking of Henry Scaddon (a.k.a Maurice Christian) and Jermyn, their places of class are supposedly well marked by their work. Scaddon is a kind of servant to the Debarrys; Jermyn is a ‘successful’ lawyer to a landed family. While Scaddon actually comes from a higher class and Jermyn is marked off as middle-class by his trade in being a lawyer, they are also marked out by their deceit, their scummyness (It’s now a word, and they made it so). In this way, the mannerisms and behaviors mark out class beyond status to note the sheep in wolves clothing and the worth of a man (or woman!) beyond his (or her!) class.

Can Sympathy Define Middle Class?

Jaffey’s theory, as I understand it, relates to North and South in that Margaret is sympathetic to the poor workers because she is afraid of poverty and afraid of becoming poor herself. According to Jaffey, this would mark Margaret as middle class. However, Mr. and Mrs. Thornton, who are middle class economically (though their status is questionable by other markers), do not have such sympathy for the workers. Therefore, by Jaffey's theory, they would not be middle class. Perhaps because they have been poor and have risen, they do not have the fear of the unknown that Margaret and her family might have. However, one would think they would have fear of returning to poverty after having wealth. I think this fear is expressed through anger rather than sympathy, however, for the Thorntons. Margaret is also sympathetic toward the illnesses and deaths among the workers because she no doubt fears illness and death in her own family, which, as it turns out, is a very real fear. 

Again, though, Mrs. Thornton is not very sympathetic to Mrs. Hale's illness and believes this is typical of Mrs. Hale's delicate upper class breeding. Which, in reference to Jaffey, would be a masculine behavior since sympathy is equated with women. And if she sees herself as middle class and the Hales as upper class, she may be eager to see them fall a notch or to climb to their level; therefore, she has no fear about her own fall and thus no sympathy. 

But Jaffey's theory is complicated by the lower classes, specifically the Higgins'. When Mr. Hale dies, Higgins comes to show his respects and sympathizes with Margaret. So is this because he has recently lost Bessie and can therefore relate to Margaret's pain. Or, as I understand Jaffey, is it that Higgins doesn't see class distinctions applied to himself. Has he taken on middle class airs because of the strike and sees himself equal to his masters, and doesn't fear replacement?  If sympathy means that middle class people see the poor and are reminded of their potential to fall, can we see Higgins sympathy to Margaret as a reminder to the impoverished that they can rise to middle class? (I hope that makes sense).

Post #2: Southern Sympathy and Industrial Love

Margaret, when rebuking Mr. Thornton’s offer of marriage, points out that putting herself between he and the angry workers assembled before his home was in no way a sign of any particular attachment to him. Rather, she asserts that “ ‘any woman, worthy of the name of woman, would come forward to shield, with her reverenced helplessness, a man in danger from the violence of numbers (195).” It was not love for him in particular, but rather sympathy with his situation, which Margaret offers as the motivation for her act. Seeing anyone else in that situation would have elicited the same response from her. In this way, Margaret would seem to validate what Audrey Jaffe contends about the presence of sympathy of in the Victorian novel, that it is accompanied by a spectacle, a visual scene in which a character, as well as the reader, is shown the suffering object of sympathy. “Victorian representations of sympathy,” Jaffe states, “are, as sympathy was for [Adam] Smith, specular, crucially involving the way capitalist social relations transform subjects into spectators of and objects for one another (8).” Margaret, witnessing the crowd of angry workers forming before Mr. Thornton, responds to this scene and not to Mr. Thornton in particular, displays the link between visual spectacle and sympathy which Jaffe articulates. Mr. Thornton seems sympathetic to Margaret because he is presented to her in a sympathetic scene as he stands before the crowd hurling anger at him. Margaret has sympathy for the spectacle, not love for Mr. Thornton.

Yet, this connection between spectacle and sympathy is severed as certain points in the novel, such as in Nicholas Higgins’ account of the interaction between union and non-union workers in the mills. According to Nicholas, “If a man doesn’t belong to th’ Union, them as works next looms has orders not to speak to him… try living a year or two among them as looks away if yo’ look at them; try working within two yards o’ crowds of men, who, yo’ know, have a grinding grudge at yo’ in their hearts- to whom if yo’ say yo’r glad, not an eye brightens, nor a lip moves, -to whom if your heart’s heavy, yo’ can never say nought… (232).” Among the workers, there exists a suspension of sympathy, an interruption of the kind of reaction which Margaret displayed when faced with sympathetic scene. It is clear that the workers still see the non-union members in their suffering, but the response to this spectacle of sympathy is withheld. The question, of course, is what makes this interruption possible?

The answer would seem to come from a surprising source: Mr. Thornton. After his proposal is rejected, Mr. Thornton resolves to bring a fruit basket to Margaret’s ailing mother. When he arrives, the text points out that “he never looked at her [Margaret]; and yet, the careful avoidance of his eyes betokened that in some way he knew exactly where, if they fell by chance, they would rest on her (239).” Margaret is known, but not seen. Most importantly, Mr. Thornton, in not looking at Margaret along with the rest of the family scene, separates her from the scene of sympathy built around Mrs. Hale’s suffering. Margaret is thus excluded from Mr. Thornton’s sympathy. Yet, this is not out of any hatred for Margaret; the novel takes pains to establish the fact that, even after his rejection, Mr. Thornton is in love with Margaret. It would seem that it is because of, not in spite of, this love that Mr. Thronton does not include Margaret in his sympathy.

It would seem to be love, then, that the novel is proposing as the way in which the scene of sympathy is held at bay. Strange as it may sound, love, it seems, is the force which allows the union members to withhold sympathy. When Nicholas says that “I take up John Boucher’s cause, as lives next door but one, wi’ a sickly wife, and eight childer, none on ‘em factory age,” one expects the common sympathetic story of a good man burdened with bad circumstances, yet he continues “and I don’t take up his cause only, though he’s a poor good-for-nought, as can only manage two looms at a time, but I take up th’ cause o’ justice (134).” The wording here is instructive; Nicholas qualifies his interest beyond Boucher with “though,” as if implying that it is Boucher’s personal faults, not his situation, that justifies his concern. Nicholas rejects Boucher’s scene of sympathy, opting to side with him even while acknowledging his flaws. In short, it is out of love.

This, I think, brings up an interesting distinction between Helstone and Milton. Much of both Mr. Hale’s and Margaret’s activity in Helstone, visiting the aged and infirm, centered on sympathy. In Milton, on the other hand, there seems to be more of an emphasis on love, such as the love which holds the union together. This is not to say that there is not love in Helstone, or that there is not sympathy in Milton, but rather that the principle governing social activity differs between the two.        

Blog Two: Educational and Vestiary Class Markers

For this post considering evidence concerning the class positions of Felix Holt and Esther Lyon, I should like to appeal primarily to educational and vestiary markers. I shall consider first Felix who clearly self-identifies as lower class, questioning "Why should I want to get into the middle class because I have some learning" (64). Felix provides further evidence for his classification as working class when he asserts that he would refuse "employment that obliges me to prop up my chin with a high cravat, and wear straps, and pass the livelong day with a set of fellows who spend their spare money on shirt-pins" (63). Mrs. Holt provides further evidence for this classification of Felix when she bemoans the fact that Felix "made himself a journeyman to Mr. Prowd the watchmaker - after all this learning - and he says he'll go with patches on his knees, and he shall like himself better" (57). However, Mrs. Holt's assertions reveal the problematic, at least to her, fact that Felix is crossing class boundaries with his choice of occupation. Additionally, as the heir to a quack medicine business and recipient of a Glaswegian education, Felix should fall squarely in the lower ranks of the middle class. As his rank is considered, the evidence placing him in the lower classes is primarily associated with his choice in clothing and occupation, aspects contradicting his educational qualifications for the middle class. 

The class position of Esther is less problematic than that of Felix. We first receive intimations of Esther's middle-class status with Mr. Lyon's description of her as "so delicately framed that the smell of tallow is loathsome to her," a trouble remedied by the wax candles purchased by the her earnings as a teacher (60). In addition to aligning her with the middle class and its delicate sensibilities, this passage clearly removes Esther from the the lower classes, for an individual of the lower ranks would not be able to afford the luxury of being offended by the scent of burning animal fat. Esther is further linked to the middle class by her practice of giving French lessons; the upper class female needs no employment, and the lower class female has not the education for such employment. Additionally, Felix, mentally cataloguing Esther, notes that she has "a very delicate scent, [. . . ] small feet, a long neck and a high crown of shining brown plaits with curls that floated backward - things, in short, that suggested a fine lady to him" (67). Esther clearly reveals her middle-class position when she delineates the practices of the fine lady for Felix, for the working class has not the leisure and the upper class has not the inclination to be so careful to inhabit the appropriate role of ladylike behavior (71). For Esther, the evidence of education, clothing, and speech patterns is in accordance with the middle class.

The class positions of these two characters is important to the novel for at least four reasons. First, the differences in class positions, though one is chosen rather than inherited, adds to the tension of the romantic choice facing Esther. Second, though one could argue that this is merely a subset of the first reason, the difference between Esther's and Felix's class positions makes Esther's decision to lower herself to Felix's position seem more pure-hearted. Third, Felix's decision to live as lower class while supporting Radical aims functions as an argument for the applicability of Radicalism to the lives of the working class; radicalism is not merely the province of the middle class. Fourth, Felix's decision to cross class boundaries reveals a strong mental constitution on his part, ostensibly enough to support his position as a hero within the novel. 

Blog One: Imaginative Identification

As we consider Jaffe's notion of scenes of sympathy, we see that one of the prerequisites for a scene of sympathy is the ability on the part of the sympathizer to project himself or herself onto the body of the object of sympathy. Jaffe argues that this essential basis of projection necessitates a de-personalization of the object of sympathy; that which we view in sympathy is merely a body. Because the object of sympathy is merely a body, pitiful to be sure, we are able to place that body within the realm of our personal emotional identification; there, but for the grace of God, go I. Jaffe notes Ruskin's assertion that the female, by virtue of her heightened sensibilities, is more suited than the male to practice "imaginative identification" (17). I wish to place Margaret within this discourse as a means of answering the second question concerning her role in the conflict between masters and workers.

I agree with Deirdre that Margaret, in many ways, functions as a reasonable mediator between the masters and workers. However, I would like to turn the focus from Margaret's use of reason to her function within the creation of scenes of sympathy. Though both Mr. Hale and Margaret had offered Mr. Thornton suggestions concerning the use of reason in dealing with the workers, it little availed. However, as the Milton workers are starting to riot, Margaret adjures Mr. Thornton to "speak to [his] workmen as if they were human beings" (177). Though Mr. Thornton's attempts to speak to the crowd fail, his excursion outside provides the opportunity for the shielding of his body by Margaret. When confronted with the suggestion that her actions were motivated by personal attraction, Margaret asserts that "any woman, worth of the name of woman, would come forward to shield, with her reverenced helplessness, a man in danger from the violence of numbers" and that "there was not a man - not a poor desperate man in all that crowd - for whom [she] had not more sympathy - for whom [she] should not have done what little [she] could more heartily" (195). Whether we believe that these "misplaced sympathies," as Mr. Thornton calls them, motivate Margaret, at least she claims they do, is unimportant for this argument. What is important is that it is only once Margaret performs this act of sympathy that Mr. Thornton begins to engage in scenes of sympathy himself. One possible reading is that Margaret, by pressing her body against him, transferred some of her feminine feelings to Mr. Thornton. The result is the same whether we argue for a physical transference of sympathetic ability or for the inspirational power of Margaret's sympathetic example: Mr. Thornton, in time, begins to assimilate a sense of sympathy into his business dealings. Therefore, in the framework offered earlier, Margaret functions to heighten the imaginative identification ability of Mr. Thornton. Put another way, Margaret allows Mr. Thornton to see the bodies of the workers as objects fit for self-projection in a scene of sympathy.   

Blog Two: Delineating Two Social Classes From One Status

As shifts occur over the course of the novel, I will be discussing the question of Esther and Felix’s class as presented in the first half of the novel.

Esther’s class position in Felix Holt would, likely, be classified as Middle Class in standing if not in income, although certain elements of her life—such as being the daughter of a Dissenter—place her decidedly on the periphery of the Class. Furthermore, Esther, unlike Margaret Hale in North and South, has bourgeoisie tendencies which further ostracize her from the other arguably Middle Class characters in the novel such as Jermyn’s daughters because such luxuries—her watch, her gloves, her candle preferences—are viewed as ridiculous in light of “the conditions of her lot,” (76) which is something Esther acknowledges: “Esther’s own mind was not free from a sense of irreconcilableness between the objects of her taste and the conditions of her lot” (76). This irreconcilableness is further accented because of her education in France where “the best-born and handsomest girls at school had always said that she might be taken for a born lady” (77).

Felix Holt, on the other hand, appears to be working-class by birth and by choice, although his education and work ethic, as we see, could easily move him into the Middle Class if he so desired. It is this move into the Middle Class which his mother desires and which is a source of tension between mother and son, a very different tension from that which exists between Harold Transome and Mrs. Transome. “Felix was heir to nothing better than a quack medicine” (51) the narrator relates before Felix Holt ever appears in the novel. His physical appearance, commented on various times by the narrator is also noticed by other characters due to his lack of subscription (submission?) to accepted/expected standards of dress: “that is young Holt leaning forward now without a cravat” (238). However, as indicated in various scenes throughout the novel, Felix Holt remains working-class by choice, saying he would prefer to make an honest living with his hands and barely get by, than be “a demagogue all tongue and stomach” (65).

Esther though her self-representation is deemed superior to Felix Holt who is considered “quite below her” (239) according to some of the town folk. It is this self-presentation of the two that makes them appear to be of very different classes although financially they are similar in station. They are also similarly marginalized within the community, Felix Holt for his radical politics and chosen association with the working class and Esther for her status as a Dissenter preacher’s daughter with bourgeois desires. Education and reading preferences aside, Felix Holt and Esther have a great deal in common when it comes to status. Their chosen markers of status, however, set them into two very separate categories with Esther being placed above Felix.          

Replacing the Recipients of Sympathy

One scene in Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South represents a split in Margaret’s sympathetic allegiances between a poor human and a non-human animal. Upon returning to Helstone, the oft-idealized home of her youth, Margaret meets with a woman (identified as “Susan’s widowed mother”) who is feuding with another woman of the village, the source of conflict being that the latter caught and killed the former’s cat, because “according to one of the savage country superstitions, the cries of a cat, in the agonies of being boiled or roasted alive, compelled (as it were) the powers of darkness to fulfill the wishes of the executioner” (390). Susan’s mother does not object to the ritualistic killing itself, but rather she disapproves of the fact that it was her cat that was destroyed in the process. The encounter with Susan’s mother both highlights Margaret’s privileged class positioning and, as Jaffe describes in Scenes of Sympathy, reveals Margaret’s anxiety about retaining her middle-class identity.

On the one hand, Margaret’s talk with Susan’s mother represents an attempt at policing the behavior of the lower classes. After listening to the tale of the cooked cat, Margaret attempts to teach Susan’s mother about the sympathy that she as a proper woman possesses, but to no avail: “Margaret listened in horror; and endeavoured in vain to enlighten the woman’s mind; but she was obliged to give up in despair...Margaret gave it up in despair, and walked away sick at heart” (390). Margaret does her duty (the charitable responsibility of a middle-class parson’s daughter) in trying to educate the woman, but because Susan’s mother fails to understand Margaret’s entreaties, Margaret is able to distance herself from this more backwards social group. Margaret would never do that to an animal or think in that superstitious manner; therefore, she is superior to the people who would treat or think about animals in that way. For Jaffe, “sympathy in Victorian fiction is always about the construction of social and cultural identities, about the individual subject’s relation to the group” (23). Significantly, in showing her sympathy for animals, Margaret is depleting her relationship with other Helstone natives, those who it is less appealing for her to be identified with.

A key reason for Margaret to disidentify with Susan’s mother is that this divide makes Margaret feel more firmly placed within the middle class, especially important at a time when class positioning is incredibly unstable. Jaffe points out that “[t]he ‘objects’ of Victorian sympathy are inseparable from Victorian middle-class self-representation precisely because they embody, to a middle-class spectator, his or her own potential narrative of social decline” (9). This uncertainty of class seems particularly difficult for a single woman without parents like Margaret, so it is important for Margaret to identify herself with the middle-class through her evolved understandings of animal welfare. David Perkins describes the rise of the animal rights movement during the 18^th century and the class implications of the newfound sympathy for animals in Romanticism and Animal Rights, noting the convenient understanding that “the genteel were pure of cruelty while the lower orders were imbued with it” (18), and he adds that focusing on animal suffering over that faced by humans represented a way of maintaining the social hierarchy: “For many persons, animals offered themselves as a conscience-appeasing surrogate for human sufferers, whose relief they were less ready to champion, perhaps because it might involve or symbolize a riskier alteration in the social order” (4). While I would not argue that Margaret ever ignores human suffering entirely, her total condemnation of the mother’s perspective and her belief that Susan’s mother cannot be educated in a way that Margaret sees to be right both imply to a certain extent that some people of the lower orders are beyond saving; thus,  in this instance, Margaret is helping to maintain the social hierarchy by espousing to an extent a belief that it cannot be changed.

Works Cited:

Gaskell, Elizabeth. North and South. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.

Jaffe, Audrey. Scenes of Sympathy: Identity and Representation in Victorian Fiction. Ithaca, NY:

Cornell UP, 2000. Print.

Perkins, David. Romanticism and Animal Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003. Print.