Mona Caird revealed her strong feminist leanings in all her writings, both fiction and nonfiction. Her 1894 novel, Daughters of Danaus, contained all the themes she stressed in her essays, including a need for female independence, both physical and emotional, and the related idea that not all women possess a natural desire to produce and raise children. She bases her revealing title on a Greek myth in which 50 daughters of Danaus marry simultaneously, and 49 of the wives slaughter their husbands on their wedding night to regain their freedom. Through her protagonist, Hadria Fullerton/Temperley, Caird also demonstrates the ways women contribute to their own oppression, as well as to that of other women. Feminist critics find of great interest Caird’s understanding of the true tragedy underlying her novel and society—that women internalized society’s dictates and so proved their own worst enemies.

Born to a bitter mother who likely should never have had children, Hadria bears the brunt of her mother’s disappointments and expectations. At first, Hadria shares her conflict with her mother with an older sister, Algitha. Mrs. Fullerton demands that both young women lead conventional lives, taking husbands and producing children. Caird emphasizes that her brothers are not challenged in the same way but instead allowed to live as they choose. Algitha rebels and moves out to work with London’s poor, leaving Hadria to shoulder the mother/daughter conflict. Although she longs to develop her musical talents, Hadria instead bows to her mother’s pressure and marries a man she does not love. She produces two sons and lives a depressed existence, with several attempts at escape failing. Gaining little satisfaction from her sons, she adopts the orphaned daughter of a single mother named Martha and moves with the girl to Paris.

Far from living an idyllic life, Hadria feels guilt over her relationship with her mother and uses Martha as a pawn in a game to “prove” her independence. Therefore, she undercuts efforts at self-sufficiency and hurts Martha as much as Mrs. Fullerton has hurt her. In addition, a surrogate mother figure, a writer named Valeria du Prel, at first inspires Hadria, representing the free artistic personality Hadria longs to be. However, Valeria eventually confuses Hadria when she expresses regrets over never having married and had a family. She also insults Hadria by writing a story about a protagonist named Caterina, modeled on Hadria, who leaves her husband to live independently of men, but then allows herself to be seduced. Valeria confuses Hadria with the fictional Caterina and only feels true sympathy for Hadria when she begins having an affair, as Caterina had.

When Mrs. Fullerton becomes ill, Hadria returns home, ending her bid for freedom. Bored with country living and caring for her mother, Hadria has her affair, then tries to end the relationship, enraging her lover. For the sake of revenge, the lover declares his paternal rights for Martha. Rather than escape her mother’s influence, Hadria mirrors her mother’s miserable failure at life, even manipulating her own daughter. Her hopes that a “chosen” child, in contrast to her natural children, would help her find her motherly instincts represents a big part of her failure. Even Algitha, the single female symbolizing independence, cannot escape her guilt regarding her mother. Algitha appears to balance Hadria’s submission to duty through her own resistance, but only escapes her mother’s tyranny due to Hadria’s self-sacrifice. Thus, Algitha completes the circle of women using women, not better to understand one another and themselves, but to support society’s gender expectations. The “ethic of responsibility” traps Hadria a second time as she stays on to care for her mother.

Caird prefigured many later feminists and psychologists by suggesting that a woman cannot properly care for another unless she can value herself. Daughters of Danaus makes the clear claim that self-sacrifice generally results in the sacrifice of mental and emotional health to duty. Hadria at one point thinks how much better off she would have been had her mother simply left the family. Instead, Mrs. Fullerton endured an unendurable situation, taking advantage of her daughter in the process.

The novel remains resonant with feminist critics who resuscitated Caird’s works in the late 20th century. Daughters of Danaus is available in print as well as in electronic text form.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gullette, Margaret Morganroth. Afterword to The Daughter of Danaus, by Mona Caird. New York: The Feminist Press, 1989, 493–534.

Heilmann, Ann. “Mona Caird: Wild Woman, New Woman, and Early Radical Feminist Critic of Marriage and Motherhood,” Women’s History Review 5, no. 1 (1996): 67–95.

Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

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