Was W. S. Gilbert a Victorian Feminist?
What did W.S. Gilbert think about women?
During the Victorian era, the division between the worlds of men and women seemed particularly wide, with many popular male writers making efforts to restrict women to the domestic sphere of influence. But as society at large changed, the role of women in public life was expanded – women began to be admitted to colleges and universities, reformers such as John Stuart Mill advocated for women’s right to vote, and women were increasingly able to participate in the world outside their homes.
So what was William S. Gilbert’s attitude toward women in the public arena?
“Gilbert always enjoyed the company of women, particularly intelligent ones, and he was attractive to them,” said Jane Stedman in her biography, W.S. Gilbert: A Classic Victorian and his Theater.
He had three sisters, and was evidently close to them. Gilbert also had a number of female friends. While working as a barrister on the Northern Circuit, he engaged in amateur dramatics with Marie Wilton, later Lady Bancroft. He worked with a few female theatrical managers, including Marie Litton and Priscilla German Reed (who together with her husband Thomas produced the German Reed entertainments). And when Gilbert was 28, he appeared comfortable enough with the idea of a “lady novelist” to ask the popular author Annie Thomas to marry him. They remained friends even though she refused.
I believe that in his personal life, his views were more progressive than might have been portrayed in his plays and opera librettos – as a satirist, he was well aware that it is important to defuse an audience’s anger by making them laugh when pointing out what’s wrong with them. As Jack Point sang in Yeomen of the Guard:
…he who’d make his fellow creatures wise
Should always gild the philosophic pill
So although many of his female characters behave as typical females of the Victorian era were expected to behave – young women sweet and demure, older women lamenting over the loss of their physical attractions – there are occasions when Gilbert took up his satirist’s pen to point out the injustice of the double standard applied to men and women, and to tackle social issues such as higher education for women and women in politics.
Women in Politics
In 1867, Gilbert’s one-act farce, Highly Improbable, was performed at the New Royalty Theater under the management of Martha (Pattie) Oliver. The work was written not long after John Stuart Mill’s unsuccessful attempt to secure women’s suffrage, and contained the first examples of his inclusion of political satire. The play’s script was never published, but Jane Stedman describes it in her book.
The play contains references to a “Young-Ladies-in-All-Employments Bill” and a “Members of Parliament Matrimonial Qualifications Bill” which would require all MPs to be married. The first bill is introduced by the six daughters of a country MP, and the second bill is their father’s attempt to make all MPs respectable through marriage. (The hero outsmarts the girls, and then qualifies for Parliament by marrying one of them.) He also has a character called Cocklethorpe, a female footman, who is dressed as a footman from head to waist, and as a lady’s maid from the waist down.
Sounds like fun! Sadly, the script was never published, as far as I can tell, so there’s no way to find out exactly what Gilbert had in mind.
Other references to women’s role in society appear in Gilbert’s problem play, Ought We to Visit Her? This straight drama is about a seemingly respectable widow who is revealed to have been an unwed mother when, years later, her grown daughter is courted by two men.
The comic opera Iolanthe deals with the topsy-turvy effect of a troupe of fairies taking over the House of Lords, but it’s also about women in politics. In fact, that’s one of the lines spoken by a disgruntled peer:
Lord Mountararat. I don’t want to say a word against brains – I’ve a great respect for brains – I often wish I had some myself – but with a House of Peers composed exclusively of people of intellect, what’s to become of the House of Commons?
Leila. I never thought of that!
Lord Mountararat. This comes of women interfering in politics. It so happens that if there is an institution in Great Britain which is not susceptible of any improvement at all, it is the House of Peers!
Higher Education for Women
The Princess, Gilbert’s 1870 musical play, and Princess Ida, his later comic opera with Sullivan, were both based on Tennyson’s 1847 poem “The Princess.”
Tennyson’s original had been written as a response to the opening of Queen’s College, London, founded in 1847. It was the first school in Britain to offer higher education to young women ages 12 to 20. At the time, members of the press criticized the establishment of the College because of the supposedly ‘dangerous’ consequences of teaching mathematics to women.
Tennyson’s work had comic as well as dramatic elements. It is the story of Princess Ida who leaves her father’s house and establishes a women’s university where men are forbidden to enter. As a baby, she was promised in marriage to the prince of a nearby country, Prince Hilarion. This prince and two of his friends decide to disguise themselves as women and enter the university. Their identities are revealed and eventually a battle is fought over the princess’ hand. The men lose and are wounded, but the women nurse them back to health. In the process, the princess falls in love with the prince and they get married in the end.
When Gilbert re-cast the poem as a musical play in 1870, women’s education was in the news again. This time, it was the 1869 opening of the first university-level women’s school, Girton College, Cambridge. He follows the story line of the original poem pretty closely, but comes closest to Tennyson’s original language in the final passage of the work.
Here is the final speech in Tennyson’s poem, spoken by Prince Hilarion:
…my bride,
My wife, my life. O we will walk this world,
Yoked in all exercise of noble end,
And so through those dark gates across the wild
That no man knows. Indeed I love thee: come,
Yield thyself up: my hopes and thine are one:
Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself;
Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me.’
Though he uses similar language, Gilbert gave this speech to Princess Ida in both his versions. In the 1870 play, Ida says:
Take me, Hilarion—“We will walk the world
Yoked in all exercise of noble end!
And so through those dark gates across the wild
That no man knows! Indeed, I love thee—Come!”
And in Princess Ida (1884), there’s only one small change:
Take me, Hilarion – “We will walk this world
Yoked in all exercise of noble end!
And so through those dark gates across the wild
That no one knows!” Indeed, I love thee – Come!
(For Star Trek aficionados, let me point out the change from “no man” to “no one.”)
David Fidler thinks that by giving the speech to Ida, he’s making her say, “You win, I lose.” But I disagree. To assume that Ida is giving up the fight is to ignore the fact that Gilbert left out the lines from the original speech, where Hilarion insists, “Yield thyself up, my hopes and thine are one…trust to me” – Here Hilarion is telling Ida to give up and embrace his hopes.
My opinion corresponds to that of Caroline Williams in “Gilbert and Sullivan: Gender, Genre, Parody (Gender and Culture Series)” which is – if I remember correctly – that giving this speech to Ida gives her more agency and allows her to make the decision to accept Hilarion.
All the Older Ladies
The most comical – and sometimes most poignant – roles in Gilbert and Sullivan belong to the older ladies: sassy Little Buttercup in HMS Pinafore, who flirts with all the sailors while she sells them her wares; Lady Jane, in Patience, who laments losing her figure and her looks; the domineering Duchess of Plaza-Toro in The Gondoliers, who’s “not a beginner,” and Katisha in The Mikado, who despite describing herself as “tough as a bone with a will of her own” sings one of the saddest and most beautiful laments of all:
Alone, and yet alive! Oh, sepulchre!
My soul is still my body’s prisoner!
Remote the peace that Death alone can give —
My doom, to wait! my punishment, to live!
Hearts do not break!
They sting and ache
For old love’s sake,
But do not die,
Though with each breath
They long for death
As witnesseth
The living I !
In conclusion, it is difficult to say exactly what Gilbert’s personal attitude was toward women — but nevertheless, he managed to create some interesting and complex female characters in his works.
What do you think? Was Gilbert more liberal in his views about women than many Victorian era men? Or did he adopt the prevailing views of his times?
