In the Lilly on Friday, I chose the “Victorian Women on Women” collection, but I only got to read some of Ellen Barlee’s work, Friendless and Helpless. Her book is organized into an introduction, outlining the context and reason for her writing, followed by thirteen chapters that focus on more specific aspects of her purpose. Her previous work, “Our Homeless Poor,” was received very well by the public, raising awareness on the sad realities of poverty, therefore Barlee decided to follow up with another volume of similar content. Friendless and Helpless is a polemic in nature, addressing the issues concerning the extensive poverty in
One of the challenges she thinks that she will face is getting some of her readers, namely those among the parish, to understand the significance of relieving poverty. Even though they are deprived and filthy, they are still members of society and deserve respect and help from the community. This is Barlee’s incentive for writing; she wants to serve as a sort of liaison between the rich and the poor, to bring their suffering into reality.
Barlee also addresses one of her criticisms in her introduction. Some have said that she pays too much attention to the “social condition of the poor and their temporal wants than the far higher and more important need of their spiritual advancement.” Barlee acknowledges that she does indeed focus more on the temporal prospects of the poor, but she explains that as one descends in the social scale, the soul is more and more stifled. She says that in order to awaken the spiritual life, they must raise the temporal prospects of the poor, so as to “prepare the soil for the divine seed to take root and expand.” She urges her readers to practice their love of all souls as true Christians, proving their faith and devotion through their good deeds rather than just speaking of it.
I read a couple pages of the first chapter, titled “Pauperism,” which seemed to be a critique of how the current law and church community turn their backs on the poor. She reports of people dying on the streets daily, with no food in their stomachs or clothes on their backs, and the community does little or nothing to help them. This chapter calls for a major cooperation of “legislative measures, philanthropic efforts, and Christian charity,” and most likely includes a plan or suggestion for major governmental reform.
I found your last question very interesting: Would Barlee advocate women relying on men and giving up some of their independence to escape or avoid poverty? I looked at Mulock-Craik, who was the other author in the "Victorian Women on Women" section. From reading her chapter on self-dependence, I think that Mulock-Craik would argue that relying on men and sacrificing some of their independence would not be a good way to avoid poverty. Rather, Mulock-Craik argues that women who are self-dependent will be able to help not only themselves, but also others. In this manner, a self-dependent woman would probably be more likely to avoid poverty than one who accepted dependence. I realize that this is sort of a theoretical view, and I think the question is more complicated than this. Certainly there would be risks and challenges for women who wanted to be self-dependent, and I don't think that Mulock-Craik would encourage women to sacrifice everything in order to be self-dependent. Rather, I think she would encourage women to find little ways to increase their self-dependence within their relationships with men.
ReplyDeleteI think Mulock-Craik's ideas on self-dependence are also relevant to your question of what the connection is between the impoverishment of women and their inadequate education. She would argue that women have not been prepared to be self-sufficient and are therefore unable to support themselves. From these brief views of Mulock-Craik and Barlee, I think it will be interesting to look at their full arguments and compare and contrast them since they were contemporary writers.
Mollie, you have brought out a lot in your synopsis. Some of what you describe in Barlee's introduction raises questions for me about the spiritual motivations for the text, especially since some of her justifications resonate with Transcendentalism, even though her text obviously predates the Transcendentalist movement (as we popularly know it). So that's an interesting gap to explore. I'm intrigued by her notions of self-dependence, its nature, its uses, what it should be and can be and shouldn't be, etc. I hadn't noticed those nuances before. I agree with Nicole that it would be interesting to compare her polemical stance with that of Mulock-Craik.
ReplyDelete-Dr. Graban