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Subj: Huddle Forward: Millenium Hall
The female directors of Millenium Hall all suffered from social injustice; however they remained virtuous until they were miraculously delivered from their dire straights. Was their deliverance a reward from their god for their trust in him? I wish they had not been so passively accepting of their fate. I suppose they had few options-no birth control and limited employment opportunities, in other words no avenue for rebellion.
What also struck me as odd was the absence of mothers. Miss Mancel, and Miss Selvyn were all nurtured physically and intellectually by a male guardian. Would the presence of a mother restrict the exceptional moral development of a female child? Sarah Scott seems to be implying that optimum growth must take place in an atmosphere free of feminine wiles, manipulation and cultural prejudices that are often transmitted through the mother. Mother and daughter were not reunited until the formative years were over.
I felt that the women who directed Millenium Hall were too virtuous and too controlling of others. I also didn't like the heavy emphasis on sexual virtue. The men were not restricted or devalued because of certain experiences. The men aren't restricted or devalued for experiencing life. Does one aspect of experience so define a woma experience so define a woman? Of course virtue is not the sole indicator of value--the dowery also contributes to her worth.
I think that it is ridiculous that Lady Emilia forfitted the love and companionship of a husband and daughter because of a twisted code of ethics that demanded a lifetime of atonement for a few hours of pleasure enjoyed outside the cultural line of marriage. Human weakness in women was punished so severely, yet men were exploiting workers, erasing cultures etc. It is interesting that all of the women who run Millenium Hall are single or widowed. If married they would be considered "femmes covert" and slaves to their husbands, unable to do the work they wished.
This novel is probably Romantic because it rejects a rigid class and gender structure. Scott tries to have the community live by Christian values which were probably less restrictive than the prevailing patriachal ones. Pat
Am I the only person who laughed aloud when Mr. Hintman died? Scott built up suspense for a couple of pages, will Mr. Hintman molest Louisa or not? She has Louisa passively, as you eloquently assert Pat, put her fate in God's hands, and then, BAM, God kills the old pedophile. Am I reading this right? Mr. Hintman's death is supposed to be read as guilt, punishment for his improper touching and premeditated molestation. Does Scott want us to read his death as the work of a just God? I applaud Scott for tackling the volatile issue of childhood sexual abuse about 200 years before we really started to do something about it. But I have to agree with Pat, I'm having trouble with the passivity of the female protagonists. If we tell a child that she must trust in god to intervene and save her from molestation, we are lying. God may have saved Louisa in the novel but that's not how it works in reality. Was Christianity really less oppressive than patriarchy. I guess I have trouble separating the two. Give me selfish Catherine Earnshaw any day, These women are too damn VIRTUOUS!----RICK
Gary Kelly introduces some quintessential "romantic" elements of Millenium Hall in his introduction, but doesn't this novel precede these themes as we know them within the traditional Romanticism dates? These ideas of "pastoral" and "mythical" categorize the narrator's impression of the place but there is not too much related language in the bulk of the text. What do we do with both historical Athenian culture, pagan and mythical, with Christian ideas of paradise lost and regained? Scott gives us descriptions of "enchangted ground" and of an "assured asylum against every evil" and the "Attick " school, and then makes references to Milton and a Christian Eden. Nature is a big part of all these ideas, but religion would seem to cut a fissure between them that would have to be resolved somehow. Morality is such an important theme in the book that it's interesting to bounce it off the wall of the Church of England. We talked in class about Wordsworth and his later reverence for God in his poetry; exactly where are the bluestockings in a patriarchical religious world that Milton set up? How does a bluestocking sensibility wrestle with the sexism in Milton?
I find the Christian God talk disapointing. Kelly in the introduction calls it a variation of the "lottery mentality." I have always thought this. Faith is great, and I don't want to get into that part of it, it's not the point, but here the women rely on luck, which is another form of disempowerment, which is also why Christianity looks like patriarchy. But it is worse in that the individual participates in it and also uses it. The women become martyrs, morality is prescriptive. I haven't figured out what Scott is trying to say by the Christianity yet, as I haven't finished the novel. I also noticed how women are introduced by the male narrator, at least, by their physical features and "constitution." "Constitution," I'm guessing is a woman's biological and therefore unchangeable disposition.
All of the above becomes more interesting, of course, when you consider this is an utopian novel. I have to think more on this, but I'm wondering if, again, Scott is trying to make a point by this, or if utopia was the only place she could speak. Maybe it's both. > Gail
Hi, its Suzanne Hirsh again. Millenium Hall is a place of utopia. All that is there is presented with a mind to display what is best. What is most interesting is the repeated emphasis on Nature there in the form of shepard fields, gardens and woods ens and woods (56,69,109). This, seen by the narrator, is treated by him in a purely descriptive vein. There is no acknowledgement that this is a major motif of the Romantic movement, but it is placed in Millenium Hall in a way that underlines its importance in the novel. If Nature is so important to the concept of Millenium Hall, or rather natural Romantic inspiration, then the ideals of Romanticism are also important to this utopia (that celebrates educated women,pp. 116-119).It is the dramatic forces of Nature that push the narrator and Lamont into the Hall for shelter. (Nature knows best, p.58.) And there is no interest in this by the ladies of the Hall to chain and cage wild animals, ie. to chain Nature, with their wealth (p.71). Also, in all the stories that the ladies tell there is an emphasis on the right for women to decide according to their emotions their spouse or lover, and never to be forced into such a relationship. Here it is gusty Nature that is followed throughout this novel, the Romantic ideal.
The question we were asked to consider in reading this novel was: how does this novel confirm or contradict what you know about Romanticism? I have considered this question in harmony with the "Cartesian model" given in class. Also, I was thinking about some of the other works, poems and novels, I've read by women authors living around this period. With these thoughts in mind I have to say there is a huge difference in subject and quality. Why? I think that most of the work women did lacked the spiritual was male expression we saw illustrated in the cartesion model, which allowed the author, male, to become one with the object they were considering. Perhaps this problem, women lacking the ability to be one with their object, was the result of inspiration, the muses, being female, or the male dominated world of the time. I believe it was the latter.
However, this didn't stop women from writing, which is a great thing. The subject matter for their work appears to be limited to the following: women in the home, economy, which is one theme running through Scott's novel, politics, and equality (I think this is the word I want. I write equality because it was something Wollstonecraft fought for.) Would it be write to consider women's work as lesser than the bigger romance poets because they didn't reach the same spiritual plane? Or, should their works be considered on individual merits? As for Scott's utopian novel, I think she is attacking society in a number of ways. First, there is the econimical attack, which is so evident in the use of the land around the hall. It was a common custom for the rich to lay out fantastic gardens, or parks for ridding and hunting. Within these parks they would build ruins, hold game animals for hunting, and fishing. Apart from the beauty these parks gave, they had no use but status. In one scene of Scott's novel the men notice a "park...much ornamented." Mrs Morgan points out that there is no waste with its walls. In fact, it is "stocked with rabbits, ...a great profusion of fish...Hares, and all sorts of game." The difference in this garden and others is that here its purpose is to afford "all the necessaries of life"(110).
If you saw the movie "The Madness of King George" or know anything about asylums and those who were placed in them, you know life wasn't good. Bud is, but life could suck! Scott deals with this inhumanity by pointing out that on Millenium Hall property there was a place where the less fortunate could live in peace, and provide for themselves if given a chance. Also, the elderly home, which was the first grove the narrator notices is another example of economy and humanity working in harmony with each other.
I think that Scott discusses the issues of providence as well. When we hear Louisa's story, the reader can't help cheering when her perverted ward bites the big one. However, when Edward dies, do we feel the same? My point is this, if God delivered her from a pervert and that makes God loving, what do we think of this same God when he kills our chance for happiness? I am not sure of the answer, or even what Scott would say. david treska
I must say that I am still unsure of what Scott is trying to say with this novel. A part of me really wants to give her the benefit of the doubt and interpret her descriptions of Millenium Hall from the viewpoint of a Male narrator as biting comments on the force of patriarchy. But overall I tend to believe she is perhaps still working within a sexist framework. This is not entirely an insult to her as a writer, but, rather, it is just the realization that she was writing in a very sexist time. Forming a Utopia for women, where they were self-sufficient and educated was quite a step for a woman writer to make. But as far as the framework of that utopia goes, it was still making women conform to an unfair, demeaning ideal.
According to the narrator, these women were highly pious and king to all living things---they made a place for outcasts in their society and they refused to exert their power over nature (which is a very anti-patriarchal thing to do). But the women are still judged based on the "grace" or "delicacy" of their appearances. And their educations consisted of little more than dancing, painting, and occasional Italian lessons. It was hardly an academic, male education, but rather still based on "making a woman more attractive on the marriage market" (86). Even particularly virtuous and intelligent women like Miss Melvyn must submit to their fathers, and her mother Lady Melvyn married a man she knew was her inferior because she refused to rebel from the notion that she needed " a guide" in life.
Furthermore, the purity of Miss Mancel and her near molestation by old Mr. Hintman was avoided by the intervention of God. The same God who expects women to submit to men and to strive for virtue in a way that men didn't. I see this novel as drenched in patriarchal assumptions about gender roles, which overshadows the significant contribution that Sarah Scott has made toward sexual equality.
Other than the obvious issues in Millenium Hall that concern women, an issue that struck me as being particularly important--and probed to a degree-- was that of children. I heard Sue Horton give a lecture on how obsessed Victorians were about sentimentilizing children and women, both in the written words of prose and some of the early photographs and sketches of the time. "By her bed-side stood the most beautiful child I ever beheld, in appearance about ten years of age, crying as if its little heart would break; not with the rage of an infant, but with the settled grief of a person mature both in years and affliction" Scott writes in the first page of Mancel's and Morgan's history. If this isn't the Dickensian Nell or Oliver Twist, then I don't know what is. Page 79 of Millenium Hall all seems right out of a Victorian workhouse. O. Twist was published in 1837, so it's pretty close to the cusp. What is it about children and the trials that they suffer that finds its ways into these decade (beside the obvious Industrial atrocities)? Also--What about the sexualization of children? I just read a current biography on Lewis Carroll, and he was a veritable Hintman. Without overt molestation or rape of children, they were still exsualized sexualized) as adults and literary figures i.e. Alice. Parents of the time were reluctant to confront this "intrigue" as Scott puts it for fear of social discomforts. Meanwhile Carroll is taking nude photographs of little girls, most of which he destroyed, while some of these mothers hold their tongues. It seems to me that the issues of children, especially female, are big topics not only with this novels but some of the novels to come.
Can any one tell me what this novel is about? The structure drives me crazy. It is painful to see the novel being born. How epistolary is this travel narrative when we get 150 pages of Horatio Alger-type financialrescue stories packaged into a very adolescent way of thinking about the world: all mothers are bad (especially step moms), men are limited and mean-spirited operators, and fashion trends are pompous. The utopian farm reminds me of Hawthorne's "Blithedale Romance" from c1849. The limits to the system seem to be that asexual communes die off and whatever kind of alternative world is proposed, it always is a reactionary one to the world as we know it -- no fully original place is creatable. What does make me take an interest in this book is how the travel narrative works as an ethnographic text: how Scott's narrator writes in epistolary form a detailed letter about the commune, how this act of representation is composed for metropolitan audiences. Anyone wonder what happens to all those people who, thanks to tough inheritance laws, did NOT get rescued from poverty from their friends or relatives during this same period?
As far as being Romantic or not, I cannot say much about this novel. I find that reading too much into any description of nature because our Romantic lens tells us it is of critical importance to the meaning being made in the novel seems to falter in places. The commune seems to me to be a kind of monestary for women who are skilled at various crafts. The human zoo the narrators are invited to see is creepy. And the fact that everyone who is a resident of the commune had to suffer horrible pasts to make into the club, the deformed servants included, seems somehow to undermine the glory of it all. That there is a million things to do critical research on in this novel seems as evident. Its importance as a whole should be argued though, since I find only the salon scenes and the descriptions of the commune to be of sociopolitical interest. Something could be said of how women were prey for predators but I do not understand the purpose in this one book for what Scott is up to. Craig
In the introduction, Gary Kelly says that the "master" narrator is given only the opportunity to describe and comment on what he sees, as opposed to the women who get to reason, and that the "master's" narration frames the narration by Mrs. Maynard. The "master"s" role is interesting to me for several reasons: one, he describes nature and seems to be emotionally affected by what he sees at Millenium Hall, which is what was happening in the converational poems, but Scott denies him the ability to reason. She appears to be taking a shot here; two, I was hoping that Kelly was wrong in saying that the narrations frame each other, and that instead there was some sort of dialogue between them, but I don't think there is. What does this mean? Men cannot enter into the discourse or of womens' utopia? And three, which seems to confound things, is that ultimately Mrs. Maynard's goal is to be obedient and honest in what she tells the "master" narrator. This explains why he is called the "master." Why does Scott do this when in Mrs. Maynard's narrations of stories most all the men are evil, and most of the women are saints.
In the stories too the women don't get to exercise choice or voice. I guess what I'm trying to say is that on one level men are denounced through their characterization, but on another they still call the shots in that ultimately we only know this story because the master narrator tells us. He filters and controls the knowledge we receive. Why does Scott give him so much power? Gail
I just want to quickly reply to what David T. brought up about providence. He pointed out that Louisa was saved from her jerk benefactor when he died, and that can be seen as a divine intervention, but that why did God rob her of happiness when Sir Edward died. My response is this: God did not rob Lousia of her happiness. It was the sin of arrogance or pride in the Grandmother that caused Sir Edward to die. He would not have gone to war if the grandmother had allowed them to marry. She was a hypocrite in claiming Louisa was a wonderful person except not God enough for her grandson because of money. It was her actions that sent Sir. Scott to war, not God's. According to providence, I think, God may put holes in the ground but it is up to the individual to walk around them. Gail
Gail, Your last comment on how providence works in the story is the best explanation I have ever seen on how this divine intervention works. It would seem that the grandmother is guilty ultimately of participating in her culture by keeping the idea of union between Louisa and Sir Edward due to position, money, and questionable birth, at bay whilst Louisa can plan to remove herself from the premises. Although Scott dabbles in theology and sermonizing here, we see the limits to the critique of religion and church as given in the novel. I have thought, ever since the Old Testament, that talking of God in terms human is futile since that dimension cannot be understand by our way of thinking in this plane of existence.
In the secular world of 1996 we seem to be saying that divine intervention really does not effect anyone in the novel snce we can play detective and assign blame to specific people for specific acts committed and hold them responsible. When David K. mentions Stillinger's model for the out-of-body experience the Romantic poets undergo in their poems, I thought it was helpful in looking at Decartes in another way but that whenever lines or planes are introduced, or we diagram something in a binary way or linear way, we are showing our own limits of Western thinking and Western ways of seeing the world. For a great example of Romantic philosophy vis-a-vis androgyny, look at any one of Calvin Klein's advertisements from any magazine around today. The blend of race, gender, and sexual preference makes for interesting ways of seeing the world now. Perfume made for "a man OR a woman" satisfies all possible targeted groups in order to cast a net over the entire global market.
Re: the narration of the novel, you are right to see the problems of authorship such a structure pose for readers. Who is in control, who speaks, and is this really a unique novel if all characters conform to the wishes of the narrator and behave accordingly? Craig
Was I having some type of wish-fulfillment fantasy a couple of weeks ago or did I hear Professor Fay say that Millenium Hall was a lesbian novel? I'm not sure what type of Sapphic sex acts I expected to read about, but the novel's subtlety in its treatment of lesbinism was a disappointment for me. Nevertheless, I do see a lesbian subtext in Millenium Hall. Mrs. Morgan and Mrs. Mancel are undoubtedly in love as Mrs. Maynard tells the reader, "Mrs. Mancel and Mrs. Maynard, who from their childhood have been so connected, that I could not if I would, disunite them in my relation, and it would be almost a sin to endeavour to separate them even in idea" (76). I also read Mrs. Selvyn as queer by her own admission. When refusing Lord Robert she surmises, "since the reason of her refusing the honour he intended her, would have made her reject the addresses of every other man in the world" (206). That means Mrs. Selvyn would not even be interested in you, Hal. I'm not suggesting that the women of Millenium Hall had nightly lesbian orgies, rather I'm asserting that these women fall somewhere along what Adrienne Rich terms the "lesbian continuum" as women loving women.-------RICK
Rick, I see where you are going with the lesbian subtext, but I just don't think it is entirely fair to equate love for other women with lesbianism. Unless, of course, you believe that sexuality is a contiuum and that absolute heterosexuality and absolute homosexuality only exist in theory and that most people fall somewhere in between. If so, I think you are correct in reading the novel the way you do. But that same argument could be made for almost any same sex relationship. Overall, I am a little leary of assuming that because these two women were "inseparable" and the best of friends, that they were sexually involved or even interested in one another. I think many of us have had same sex friends who we adore but don't want to go to bed with. In summary, love doesn't always mean sex. Leslie
Leslie/Gail/David:
Thanks for your responses but I stand firmly by my assertion that there is a lesbian subtext running through Millenium Hall. Can you really prove otherwise? If you can prove to me from the text that either Mrs. Morgan or Mrs. Selvyn is heterosexual, I will be glad to withraw my thesis. There is nothing in the text that suggests that these women are heterosexual, so my quotations as subtle and far-fetched as they may sound may just have some resonance. Look, I know that the lesbian subtext is heavily closeted and so even I wondered at first whether or not it was there. But what can I suspect? Dental dams tucked underneath the bluestockings, an issue of ON OUR BACKS casually lying across an armoire? The truth is that if Scott was lesbian, she was most likely heavily closeted and her novel reflects this closeting. Perhaps, she herself had no intention that she was inserting a lesbian subtext into her novel. Yet, it has still peeked out from underneath the closet door.
The primary erotic act in the book is "caressing." This is the word that Scott uses to describe the improper touching of Louisa by Mr. Hintman. Interestingly enough, "caresses" are also the physical way in which Mrs. Mancel and Mrs. Morgan communicate...."that she gave her as many caresses as the other had lavished upon her" may be as explicit as Scott dared get. I want to reiterate that I do not believe that there is any evidence of lesbian sex in the novel (but there is little eveidence of heterosexual sex either and what evidence there is Mr. Hintman, Lord Robert is used to portray males as undesirable sexual partners). I think that when we're talking about a novel in written in the eighteenth century, though, lesbianism need not include depictions of lesbian sex. If someones primary erotic bond is with a member of her own sex, I define that as homosexuality. This is the sentence that really cements it for me: It's when the two young women (Mancel and Morgan) are separated: "This was the severest affliction they had ever yet experienced, or indeed were CAPABLE OF FEELING. United from their childhood, the CONNECTION OF SOUL AND BODY did not seem more INDISSOLUBLE, nor were ever divided with greater pain" (131). It's quotes like that one along with Mrs. Selvyn's explanation that she is most happy with Lady Emilia and would not marry any man in the world that convinve me I'm right.
Actually, Gail, I think maybe you and I agree more than you think. All I'm really saying is that there is "something there" between some of the women in the text. And I admit wholeheartedly that it is not an OUT subtext, although to make a convincing argument I must write with more confidence than the text gives me. ---RICK
As far as this being a feminist text by our standards today, I think it is not; however, we must keep in mind the society in which Scott is writing. I would like to suggest that Scott is attempting to find a place for women outside of the domestic sphere of marriage and yet maintain respectability for women. It seems at the time there were three stages for women: pre-married, married, and post-married. Any woman who didn't fit into these parameters was a failure oe spinster, old maid, or a fallen woman. Scott was attempting to locate an area in which women could live independently outside of the institution of marriage and still fit into the social scheme. Unmarried women seemed to present a problem to society because they did not fit into the social structure. Moreover, unmarried women seemed to create anxiety in society because of there was no constraint on their sexuality. Widows especially created anxiety because they were often women of social standing with the financial means to be autonomous. Scott is presenting an alternative solution to the problems which these women present to society.
Another problem which Scott tackles in Millenium Hall is the value which society places on women. Since women were valued for their reproductive capabilities, these women who were outside of the marriage institution had no societal value. By giving the women charitable enterprises Scott keeps the women industrious (out of trouble), and she gives society a reason to value them.
Furthermore, I would like to suggest that she assumes a male persona in order to give her work authority and also to get a male endorsement of Millenium Hall. Scott sets up the narrator as a respectable gentleman and his opinion would bear more weight in society than a woman's.
Rick, I do think that there are a lot of similarities between MH and Victim of Prejudice. In both novels characters are brought up by males. Miss Selvyn in MH and Mary Raymond in Victim are nurtured by males. Both heroines are encouraged and prepared to be independent and almost equal. They are both insulated from acquiring "female" traits like manipulation and passive-aggresive behavior. I think the point being made is that even when virtuous and exemplary, a single, unemployed, unprotected woman is in a dangerous place.
The women in both novels look to their god (made in the image of a male) to rescue them. Another female character, Jane Eyre,depended on her virtue and her god to rescue her when she fled, penniless, from Rochester"s indecent proposal. She did find deliverance after days of begging, starvation and near death. The women of MH were saved by sudden inheritances. Most of the help received was from women. However, Mary Raymond's fate is more realistic; she dies--her spirit broken. I think that the authors of these works might be suggesting that it is up to society to change conditions that prevent half of humanity from living independently, according to their abilities. I also think that Scott, Hays and Bronte are saying that a patriachal society with its restrictions on education, employment and inheritance twists and perverts the true nature of women and love.