Power within the Parlor; Equating Gender Roles with Autonomy in Pamela and Mrs. Dalloway


This body, with all its capacities, seemed nothing — nothing at all.  She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them, up Bond Street, this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa any more; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway.  
-Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

A long-standing assumption among critics examining the female experience centers upon the idea that socially-prescribed gender roles have long lead to a loss of female autonomy. Remarking upon the two pivotal novels Pamela and Mrs. Dalloway, critics claim that such gender roles enforce upon women an “increasingly suffocating Victorian image of the proper role of women and their ‘sphere’” (Abrams 5). However, critics have largely ignored the self-assertion that the character exerts within the walls of her own parlor. Each woman seems to push back against suppressive social codes by exercising power within their perspective sphere of influence. Through the themes of marriage and domestic duties, I chart the trajectory of how these female characters, from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, negotiate specific gender roles to satisfy their needs for some means of autonomy. Perhaps in an attempt to impose contemporary values onto 18th and 19th century culture, critics have placed assumptions upon and thus overlooked underlying evidence of equality that has led to the autonomy that the modern woman currently holds.
Looking at the novel as female experience, the gender roles within marriage pose a complicated paradigm that leads critics to question whether such a ceremony isn’t merely a different form of prostitution: the woman gives herself up – subordinates her will - for the autonomy and security that the male figure can offer her. Given this paradigm, the plot becomes “a narrative of currency in which personality is constructed on the protean model of money” in which the woman is nothing more than a commodity, the balancing end of “serial exchanges in the world of the marketplace” (Kibbie 561). For many critics, any sense of autonomy that Pamela or Clarissa holds within her marriage is thus an illusion. As the embodiment of a woman subject to the social codes of the 18th century, scholars such as Alice Wakely and Thomas Keymer read Pamela as the experience of a “virtuous young servant who resists and denounces her oppressive master until, apparently, reformed, he makes her his obedient wife” (xxi). Mr. B’s sudden reformation can thus be interpreted as a ruse that insures him ownership over Pamela.
Extending to the 19th century, Clarissa has more liberty, in terms of subservience to male dominance, than her predecessor, Pamela. However, critics such as Shannon Forbes argue that if Clarissa is to acquire the autonomy she desires, her options are limited to a life is defined in terms of her performance as Mrs. Richard Dalloway, the perfect hostess. As Clarissa tries to “equate the performance of this role with her identity,…her attempts to use the role as a substitute for the fixed – essentially the Victorian – sense of self she covets result in emptiness, a lack of fulfillment, and ironically, virtually no self at all” (39). Although referring specifically to the 18th century, Folkenflik’s argument applies equally to the 19th century when he asserts that, if marriage is a representation of the decline of female authority within the novel, the woman is “empowered as a mouthpiece for a reinscribed male authority” (266). Therefore, if the author “portrays the growth to selfhood sympathetically and celebrates the individuality” of the character, he ”nevertheless suggests powerfully that the good wife is in many ways the good servant" (268). With only two options (angel in the house or whore in the streets), critics argue that each character is obligated to choose the less obvious form of prostitution – a form that involves security and comfort, if not autonomy.  However, while operating under the assumption that the marriage ceremony has little do to with the right or wrong of the thing, one must question whether women willingly subject themselves to suppression in pursuit of security, or if there remains another need – a stronger need – that impels them to position themselves as victim to such “tragedies”.
While it cannot be denied that women lack any option beyond giving themselves up to a ceremony critics argue can only be defined as “victimization, oppression, or subjection” (Yelin 174). However, critics fail to take into account their awareness of such limitations and overlook the ways in which these women utilize the system to acquire that which they need.  In playing by the rules of the system, Pamela and Clarissa are able to negotiate for, perhaps, the only autonomy available to them. For Clarissa, her willingness to perform as ‘Mrs. Richard Dalloway,’ at the expense of her identity, becomes a tool of negotiation for autonomy. Clarissa “does things,” including performing the role of Mrs. Richard Dalloway, “not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think [she is] this or that” (Woolf 10). At times “desperately unhappy,” Clarissa conforms to a certain mold specific to prescribed gender roles attached to the position of wife of Richard Dalloway, as “She had a perfectly clear notion of what she wanted…in marriage a little licence, a little independence….which Richard gave her, and she him” (Woolf 118, 74). While she questions the costs of marrying for independence, rather than love, Clarissa continually reminds herself of the benefits of “a gulf…even between husband and wife,” for it is something one “would not part with…or take it, against his will, from one's husband, without losing one's independence, one's self-respect--something, after all, priceless" (Woolf 120). Clarissa’s performance, then, becomes a sacrifice that reveals the extent of significance she places upon autonomy.
While Clarissa will exchange her identity and a loving relationship for independence, Pamela’s virtue will become her most powerful means of negotiating for autonomy. She can only truly escape poverty by means of ascension within the class system through marriage into a higher class; Pamela is well aware of this. Any splinter of autonomy available through poverty can hardly compare to the autonomy Pamela would gain through marriage to a gentleman such as Mr. B. Is Pamela’s adamant denial of Mr. B’s advances entirely due to her sense of morality, or does she utilize to her virtue as a commodity to seek a fair exchange? She is able to market herself through her most valuable asset: “Sir, will I dare to tell you, that I will make no Freewill Offering of my virtue” as it is “as dear to [her], as if I was of the highest quality” (Richardson 191). Upon denying his offers of large sums of money, a vast and prosperous estate, and a high social status for her virtue, she ultimately consents when he offers her what she wants: authority and autonomy (in addition to the preceding items offered) through marriage, exclaiming “O how I love to be generously used!...I may be the means of making many happy, as well as myself, by placing a generous Confidence in him” (Richardson 252). Prior to the wedding, the two discuss the condition of their marriage. Pamela declares her desire for the liberty to govern the household, asserting “if you give me leave, I will myself look into such parts of the family oeconomy, as may not be beneath the rank to which I shall have the favour of being exalted” (Richardson 263). With the autonomy she desires as Mr. B’s wife, Pamela lists of the ways in which she will exert her range of influence outside of her domestic sphere, paying visits “to the sick Poor in the Neighbourhood around you; and administer to their Wants and Necessities,” engaging in “Musick, which my good Lady taught me, will fill up some Intervals, if I should have any” (Richardson 263-264). Through a close look at the ways in which both characters carve out autonomy from within strict gender roles as wives, it is clear that what appears as “victimization, oppression, or subjection” can, at a closer look, be evidence of women’s power (Richardson 174). Each woman has learned how to negotiate specific gender roles to satisfy their needs for some means of autonomy within and outside of their marital relationship.  
While gender roles within marriage are subject to negotiation, critics argue that the woman remains confined within the domestic sphere – a space subject to the rules set by the “man of the house” - a confinement that Nancy K. Miller would call “a locus of cultural commonplaces about women’s identity and woman’s place” (10). For critics, any autonomy the woman possesses, as wife of Mr. B and Mr. Dalloway is further undermined by confinement to gender roles within her parlor walls. After Pamela marries Mr. B., he institutes an elaborate list of forty-eight rules for her to follow; she is to “bear with him, even when I find him in the wrong”, and must not, “when he is in great Wrath with any body, break in upon him, without his Leave”, etc. To again assure herself of the lengthy list of requirements, she writes them out, declaring, “O how the sweet Man outdoes me in Thoughts, Words, Power, and every thing!” (Richardson 366). Confined to a tight definition through gender roles critics see Pamela as “a devastating demystification” that “will give us the tragic reality” (Eagleton 39). While more of a vivacious snob, Clarissa, too, is consumed by the system and defined by social codes and conventions, as she is “continuing a tradition of the English intellectual aristocracy to which she firmly belonged” (Zwerdling 70). Such confinement from any realm outside of the household, critics argue, cannot coincide with any form of autonomy, as the woman has no choice in the gender roles she is to carry out.
While it is certain women cannot, at this point, assert power within certain gender roles prescribed by men through marriage, critics are overlooking the extent of power that each character exerts from within the walls of her domestic sphere – a power that extends beyond the confinement of her household space. Similarly, Pamela and Clarissa play by the rules of the system to negotiate for, perhaps, the only autonomy available to them. Mr. B. presents Pamela with two different contracts. The first is a set of “proposals,” offering “500 Guineas, for [her] own use,” full property of a “purchase lately made in Kent,” the extension of his “favour to any other of your relations”, “four complete suits of rich cloaths,” “two Diamond Rings and two pair of ear-rings, and [a] diamond necklace,” in exchange for Pamela’s consent to becoming “Mistress of [his] person and fortune, as much as if the foolish ceremony had passed” (Richardson 190-191). Pamela will, once again, refuse his proposal, until he resorts to law and reconstructs a contract that affords her the position of wife. In putting such terms in the form of contract, a legal document between two autonomous parties, Pamela has thus become a partner in an exchange that implies autonomy on both sides. Through this contract, Mr. B. prescribes forty-eight rigorous rules of conduct for Pamela to follow within the domestic sphere. She agrees with many, but not all of his rules governing this household space. She presumes to question and is even unwilling to follow some of her husband’s wishes. In response to the first rule that denotes she “must not, when he is in great wrath with any body, break in upon him, without his leave,” Pamela notes between the margins, “Well, I’ll remember it, I warrant. But yet I fancy this Rule is almost peculiar to himself,” (Richardson 448). Her response to the rule that dictates she must “bear with him, even when [she] find[s] him in the wrong” is, “this is a little hard, as the case may be!” (Richardson 448). Describing the last rule as “crown[ing] all the rest,” Pamela finds satisfaction in the rule that denotes he “ought not abridge her of any privilege of her sex” (Richardson 451). Only through the means of a legally binding contract, Pamela will utilize her asset of virtue as leverage to attain the autonomy she desires.
While Pamela must depend upon the law to guarantee a rise in class and autonomy, Clarissa’s position as member of the aristocracy will leave her with no other option than to perform as “the perfect hostess,” if autonomy is what she seeks. However, Clarissa will find a way to ascribe significance to validate the mundane nature of her roles as hostess. Passing a stone urn becomes “the most exquisite moment of her whole life” (Woolf 35). Her own parasol is handled like “a sacred weapon which a Goddess, having acquitted herself honourably in the field of battle, sheds, and placed it in the umbrella stand” (Woolf 29) and her drawing room becomes “a sort of meeting-place” in which she “talk[s] about life, how [she is going] to reform the world,” perhaps from within her own sphere (Woolf 75). Thus, Clarissa is a commanding figure within her household. It is a place in which Richard himself feels undermined, as he has little power within her domain: “strange how a mistress knows the very moment, the very temper of her house!” (Woolf 37). While Richard often finds Clarissa’s duties to be a “waste [of] the entire afternoon,” he finds something exquisite, unexplainable command in Clarissa’s presence: “’What is this terror? What is this ecstasy?’ He thought to himself. ‘What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement? It is Clarissa,’ he said. For there she was” (Woolf 114, 190). While women lack certain liberties ascribed to men, they cunningly find a means of asserting power from the realm of their household.
While gender roles among woman seem to have fluctuated slightly from century to century, one commonality exists among women in concordance with such social codes of conduct: their ability to reject the complacent and exert a wide-ranging influence by means of autonomy. Regardless of the threat that critics argue social codes and male dominance pose upon autonomy within the female sphere, Richardson’s Pamela and Woolf’s Clarissa artfully negotiate specific gender roles to exert perhaps the only autonomy available to them within the walls of her own parlor. Through underlying power and self-assertion, the female character of each novel will powerfully wield her own “independence, [her own] self-respect—something” the woman values as “priceless" (Woolf 120).

© 2011 by Rachel Lowry. All rights reserved.
Works Cited

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