I was doing some outside research for class and found out that the assigned poem from "The Angel in the House" is now something that a lot of critics reference. The section of the poem we had to read for today was titled "The Paragon." When I OED'd this term (because I honestly did not know what it meant) I found out that it means "An object of outstanding quality or value; an object which serves as a model of some quality" and "A match, an equal; a companion or partner in marriage; a rival or competitor." I think it's important to know how high of a pedestal women of the house seem to be placed on in this poem. I think that by understanding that, we can understand why the concept of the "Angel" is often criticized, especially by women.
We also see that the "Angel" is represented as extremely important to the household. Patmore writes,
Yet is it now my chosen task
To sing her worth as Maid and Wife;
Nor happier post than this I ask,
To live her laureate all my life.
I think that by stating "to sing her worth as Maid and Wife" is sort of degrading. Sure, this poem is placing a woman on a pedestal, but at what cost? It seems the implications are that cleaning and "loving" are the only tasks a woman is good at, since they are the only ones worthy of poetry praise.
I think what is more curious than the actual poem itself is the criticism around the poem. I remember taking a summer women's literature class and reading "Professions for Women" by Virginia Woolf. Woolf states, "I discovered that if I were going to review books I should need to do battle with a certain phantom. And the phantom was a woman, and when I came to know her better I called her after the heroine of a famous poem, The Angel in the House. It was she who used to come between me and my paper when I was writing reviews. It was she who bothered me and wasted my time and so tormented me that at last I killed her."
I like the fact that Woolf calls the "angel" a "phantom." I think that the "angel" represents the concept of women following the strict, conservative path that has been laid out in front of them by the tradition of their mothers: be pure, get married, have children, take care of the home, live by morality, do as your husband says, die. Woolf goes on to state that she sometimes while writing feels that she should be mindful of how others will view her writing, especially men, but then realizes that no self-respecting critic would place too heavy a weight on others' feelings. In this sense she had to kill the "angel in the house," the one inside her, in order to do what she wanted, and not what she felt she should do.
Another Victorian poem that I feel relates a lot to this concept of the "angel" is Augusta Webster's "A Castaway." This poem is written in the perspective of a Victorian prostitute who resents the negativity that she receives from women who have chosen the path of "wife." Webster writes,
Well, well, the silly rules this silly world
makes about women! This is one of them.
Why must there be pretence of teaching them
...
Do I not know this,
I like my betters, that a woman's life,
her natural life, her good life, her one life,
is in her husband, God on earth to her,
and what she knows and what she can and is
is only good as it brings good to him?
I like how the author is noting that, at the time, by choosing the title of "wife" a woman is becoming a "slave" to her husband's happiness. It seems here that the speaker would rather be a prostitute than a wife and that she too, while it may have been a struggle for her, has killed the angel (or is trying to kill the angel).
Just my thoughts. And if you haven't read the essay by Woolf or the poem by Webster I definitely encourage you to!
[Victorian Literature]
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