I liked many of the ideas and subjects of Elizabeth Langland’s book Nobody’s Angels, but I found some of these ideas to be simplistic and obvious. When I took a women’s writers course in the past I was introduced to Hannah Cullwick and her diary, so I was excited to read Langland’s take on her odd life and relationship. Because this chapter was not assigned I’ll quickly sum up Hannah’s life. Cullwick was a servant who fell in love with her “master” Arthur Munby and her love, or at least sexual desire, was reciprocated by Munby. Cullwick’s diary is an extensive and very important primary document of the interrelation between servant and master in nineteenth-century English culture. The diary showcases many of the erotic and explicit sexual fantasies of Munby that range from watching Hannah slave away at chores all day long to her painting herself black and wearing chains and calling him “massa.” I was surprised that Langland makes it seem that Hannah did not wish to be seen as Munby’s wife after their marriage. She states that Hannah refused to become a lady, which I do not believe to be true. I think with the social constraints of the time, particularly Munby’s family who never knew of the marriage, Cullwick was never able to establish herself in an upper class role. It is not that she did not, but that she could not. I was also very astonished that Langland tried to put Cullwick’s story in the frame of the fairy tale Cinderella. Equating Hannah’s very complex and unconventional life to a child’s fairy tale to me degrades and demeans everything we should learn from a document as important to class and social structure as Hannah’s diary.
This same kind of simplification is carried on into her final chapter when she analysis sensation fiction. Although I agree with Langland that Lady Audley’s Secret is a less intricate and semi-borrowed plot from Collins’ much more complex and exceptional plot of The Woman in White it is her analysis of The Woman in White I have problems with. My main problem comes with her reading of sensation fiction and the independent, rebel woman who is curbed by the male hero at the end of the novel. I do not disagree with her characterization of two very conflicting women in sensation fiction, the docile, dependent woman and the active, independent woman, but it is her portrayal of these characters in juxtaposition with The Woman in White I disagree with, mainly her portrayal of the independent Marian. Langland sees Marian as being a seductively beautiful woman whom catches the eye of the novel’s hero Walter Hartright. Walter is in fact repulsed by his first sight of Marian. Hartright is momentarily taken from Marian’s figure from afar, but when she actually turns to introduce herself her features, described by Collins as “swarthy” and “repelled” are used. He questions the man-like and sharp features upon such a lovely frame and after his initial view of Marian’s figure Hartright is never anything close to attracted to her. His love, from the beginning, is for her stepsister Laura. I am also troubled by Langland’s reading of Marian as class-based and the tasks she must complete throughout the novel as being based on her class. These tasks are part of the sensation plot and should not be viewed in the same way as other Victorian works of fiction like a Bronte or Eliot novel meant to showcase the realistic ways of class. The role Marian plays while they are trying to assist Laura is part of a, for lack of a better word, sensationalized plot device and should not be meant to showcase her class role. Her role is exactly that, she is simply an actress in the larger scale plot to help her sister.
I think that Langland’s mixture of nonfiction and fiction, and even the severely different types of fiction hinders her ability to look more closely at the sociological conditions surrounding these works, with Cullwick’s diary and Collins’ novel being examples of such.
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