Langland argues that intermarriages between working class women and upper class men have become non-narratable in nineteenth century fiction. In her view, it is a result of women functioning as signifiers of class identity. They had an important role to play in "consolidating the genteel middle class, as opposed to both the working class and the petite bourgeoise" (p.11). Further, she claims that the myth of the Angle in the House that we encounter in nineteenth century narratives effectively masks the more critical managerial role that a middle-class Victorian woman was expected play within the household to manage their class status.
While her argument is interesting and important in that it exposes the complex and agentive role that middle-class women performed within their households in the formation of class identities, without reducing them to passive repositories of cultural meanings, I found her textual analysis to be problematic and reductive at times. Langland attempts to assimilate these rich and ambiguous narratives, which, as she acknowledges, are discursive constructions, too rigidly to fit her own argument. For instance, in her analysis of Dickens David Copperfield, Langland discusses the ways in which Dora's incompetence and failures as a household manager interfere with David's upward mobility. However, it is possible to argue that it is precisely such failures in Dora's part that qualifies her for the role of an angle, as she is referred to by David, in keeping with the images of vulnerable and frail Victorian upper-class women that are deployed in nineteenth century narratives. While her death enabled David to marry a more pragmatic and capable woman, she is presented as nothing but a domestic or domesticated angel. It is Dora's inability to mould herself to this pragmatic ideal of the "Angle of the House" and the refusal to manage her servants that makes her interesting and subversive.
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