The slow deconstruction of ‘The angel of the home’

Coventry Patmore was a poet and literary critic who, in the heart of Victorian England, composed a poem entitled The Angel in the House.

In its time it was received as a love poem, but an analysis based on feminist literary criticism clearly shows that the text is really dedicated to explaining how women could satisfy and please men.

A literary text does not stop reflecting in a more or less explicit way the thought and idiosyncrasies of the context of production of a literary work.

Starting from this line of analysis, the poem The Angel in the House (1864) by Patmore describes marriage with great accuracy.

Here are some lines taken from Canto IX of the poem:

Man must be pleased; but him to please

is woman’s pleasure; down the gulf

Of his condoled necessities

She casts her best, she flings herself.

Man must be pleased; but pleasing him

it is the pleasure of the woman; through the abyss

Of your sympathized needs

She throws the best of herself, she throws herself.

Homebound Women

The previous verses are just a sample of the way in which Patmore conceives of femininity, a widespread conception in the society of that time, in which what was expected of women was that they lived confined to the home, dedicated exclusively to their husbands. and to housework.

Innocence and naivety were expected of them. Complete submission was also expected to satisfy her husband’s wishes. That is to say, the patriarchal conception of femininity, as reflected in the poem, is a justification for exercising violence based on social inequality.

This text exemplifies the root of a still unresolved social conflict, inequality and violence against women. Vàlles and Marí i Puig, in their work Political science, a manualdescribe the stages of politicization of a social conflict that consists in identifying it, in raising awareness on the part of the groups involved, in social mobilization and in transferring the conflict to the public scene to solve the imbalance from the institutions.

In this sense, women from different parts of the world fought this ideal with their voices and with their pens despite all the resistance offered by a society dominated by men.

In Spain, María del Pilar Sinués de Marco was an author who widely refuted this concept with an energetic and vindictive writing. The author herself directed a magazine with the title The angel of the home which was published periodically in Madrid from 1864 to 1869. It was a publication aimed at bourgeois and liberal women whose information had a strong moralizing tone.

Irony as a vindictive rhetorical artifact permeates this magazine, which is defined as a “weekly magazine of literature, education, fashion, theater, salons and all kinds of work of immediate and recognized utility” that contains “moral examples, instruction and pleasant recreation for the ladies”.

To marry would be to die

In number 20, published on May 20, 1865 in Madrid, one could read the continuation of daughter, wife and mother, a collection of letters dedicated to women that dealt with duties to the family and society. The following lines serve as an example of the content of said letters:

You will have seen, since I am talking about your husband, that I know that you have married: ah, my poor sister! That life would be death for me! My God, end life there, without seeing the world, without knowing the beauties it contains! If you knew how many he has! And you who are pretty and you are so few years old! How awful!

In England, Virginia Woolf masterfully combated the concept of the “household angel” by stating that killing him was an essential part of any writer’s job. This author dedicated a large part of her work to demystifying the prevailing feminine ideal in society in works such as a room of one’s own o Mrs Dalloway.

Free and equal in dignity and rights

Here it is worth reflecting on the role of politics in conflict resolution. The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” But are the means really being put in place to guarantee this right? It is enough to review the United Nations reports to know the high rate of gender inequality in the world.

By way of conclusion, the institutions have to acquire the commitment to solve a social problem that has lurked for centuries. However, slowly and progressively discreet legislative advances have taken place that have moved towards equality. Although they are still insufficient, politics is the only way to make progress in terms of equality until the “angel of the home” is deconstructed.

Antonio Jesús Tinedo Rodríguez, Predoctoral Fellow (UNED-Santander), UNED – National University of Distance Education

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.