Geraldine Jewsbury’s first novel, Zoe: The History of Two Lives, was one of the first Victorian novels to interrogate religious skepticism. Jewsbury could not rush through such an important topic, as she explained to her lifelong friend and correspondent Jane Welsh Carlyle in a letter dated October 19, 1846:
“I am writing away at my book, and have got two or three more chapters done, but I cannot get on fast; I must go through a certain process, and cannot make haste.”
She had been thinking of the topic for some time before she published her book in three volumes, as evidenced in her letter of August 12, 1848. She asks Carlyle whether she has read Daniel Defoe’s Religious Courtship, assuring her friend that she would like it, adding:
“The thing that has struck me lately in the course of my reading is, though we are terrible unbelievers in this age, without a rag of a creed to cover us, yet we have a much deeper reverence for religion, a more religious sentiment is spread abroad, than was general in Defoe’s days.”
In a letter of January 17, 1850, she continues in this vein, remarking:
“I am in such a state of reaction against all moral complications that I don’t believe that I will meddle with the metaphysics of the Ten Commandments any time this side of the Millennium. I am bothered to death with that kind of thing in real life enough just now.”
She knew that others might not understand her attitude, writing that spring that
“the Rectory people . . . are really nice, and Mrs. ___ actually read Zoe, and made some extracts from it, in spite of being so dreadfully shocked.”
The dreadful shock received by Jewsbury’s readers derived from her plot in which the Zoe of her title begins her life in scandal as the bastard daughter of an English serviceman named George Clifford and a beautiful Greek woman, also named Zoe, and ends it in love with an ex-priest named Everhard. That double taboo surprisingly did not land the novel among those labeled sensation fiction, partly due to Jewsbury’s high moral tone throughout.
While mildly didactic, due to detailed scenes describing Everhard’s conflict over faith, the novel remains entertaining. It might appeal especially to feminist critics in its characterization of Zoe and her stepdaughter, Clothilde, as well as to psychoanalytic critics, in its suggestions about sex and gender-related power in the 19th century, as well as the obvious symbolism of Everhard’s name and additional sexually charged elements, however unconsciously they may have been formed by Jewsbury.
Zoe Clifford does not appear until after 100 pages of the first volume, as the initial portion reviews the youth of two brothers, Everhard and Louis Burrows, sons of an English man and a French woman. Everhard has been dedicated to the Catholic Church, a reason his quickly widowed mother employs basically to ignore him, resulting in his miserable childhood. He will eventually spend time with his uncle in Paris, then move on to Rome and enter the church.
Later he meets Zoe, who, while eventually legitimized as a toddler when her father at last married her mother, nevertheless remained on the fringes of the best society due to the details of her birth. Unable to make a traditional marriage to the squire’s son, who requests her hand despite the protest of his family, she marries instead a 50-year-old widower with a pockmarked face named Gifford. They produce two children and Gifford dies, leaving Zoe to raise their sons and his daughter by his first wife, Clothilde.
Clothilde matures to enter a convent, gaining the extreme respect and devotion of a man she eventually orders to conduct himself according to his social level; he goes on to become a leader in his church and his government, marrying Zoe’s best friend, Lady Clara.
Zoe will meet and fall in love with Everhard, who leaves the church following a crisis of faith, but Zoe understands his vow of chastity as lifelong. Their love will never be realized. She also falls in love with the somewhat unscrupulous Frenchman Count Mirabeau, but she rejects his proposal due to her conflict over her feelings for Everhard. In the final chapter, Zoe receives a letter Everhard wrote to her on his deathbed, proclaiming his love and devotion.
Part of the approach known as feminist criticism is to “reclaim” female-written text by revealing subtexts buried beneath the surface meaning of those works. In this novel, such critics would immediately note what seems to be an underlying message regarding powerful, active women, that they must live as something other than traditional women in order to claim that power.
Zoe’s uncle, to whose care she is entrusted when orphaned, decides to educate her as a man, figuratively transforming her from female to male, ostensibly because her birth out of wedlock causes her peculiarly independent personality. The suggestion that “normal” women, those complying with society’s moral mold, cannot be educated as men, suggests that the taboo relationship of Zoe’s parents (the absence of a legal father) liberates her mind.
In addition, she remains single for the greater part of the book, having married basically in order to procreate dutifully; her mothering instincts remain firmly in place, and she is able to mother not only her own two sons, but also Clothilde. As a widow, Zoe commands the admiration of all society and the close devotion of two men.
One is a libertine who functions outside polite society’s acceptable boundaries, but due to his maleness is excused for his actions and will be made acceptable by marriage to a respectable woman. The other man whose devotion Zoe claims is a priest, protected by the boundary of celibacy. Both are extremely desirable and bright men, with Everhard an acknowledged author and philosopher of sorts. Their positions remain unthreatened, as their behavior fits into one or more of the many roles allowed men.
However, Zoe, had she been born a “normal” woman, would remain confined by her culture’s expectations. In a passage illustrating Jewsbury’s ability to move beyond mere stereotype, Mirabeau tells Zoe as he anticipates her rejection:
“Remorse is the only hell a noble-minded man can dread. Women feel nothing, but the hell of consequences; understand nothing, beyond the blame of the world, and the loss of reputation.”
As if those “nothings” were not a heavy enough load, Zoe assumes yet another. She disagrees with him, explaining:
“Some women can fear the reality of doing wrong, more than the blame attached to it.”
That is a different sort of woman, indeed, than the one society anticipates. Although Zoe participates in the marriage ritual, she never achieves the type of normality expected of the majority of women, which actually works to her advantage.
Clothilde, on the other hand, does comply with the limited roles available to a woman, although she selects one preferable to a minority of females. Clothilde chooses servitude, as did traditional wives, but servitude to another patriarchal institution, the church. The nunnery even adopts the traditional feminine labels, calling nuns “wives” of Christ or of the Church, and using the term “mother” as a title of high status, indicating a leader of nuns.
In her protected position, the quiet Clothilde wields enormous power over men as well as women. Freed from the confines of a sexual relationship and all its expectation, Clothilde may function as an adviser to important men. Because of her life in a community of women and professed elevation through an enriched otherworldly existence, she becomes imbued with special talents and is utterably desirable but not as a sexual object.
Jewsbury’s works deserve more attention than they have received; many are not available outside rare-book collections. Fortunately, Zoe was selected as one in a collection of 121 novels by Professor Robert Lee Wolff of Harvard University to become part of a Garland Publishing series titled Victorian Fiction: Novels of Faith and Doubt. This happy circumstance makes it easy to find.
Bibliography
Ireland, Mrs. Alexander, ed. Selections from the Letters of Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury to Jane Welsh Carlyle. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1892.
Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis
Slave Narrative 
Analysis of Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier 
Analysis of Molly Keane’s Good Behaviour 
Analysis of Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook
You must be logged in to post a comment.