I really loved Solie’s essay entitled “’Girling’ at the Parlor Piano,” as it used teenage girls’ diaries as well as popular Victorian novels to convey the notions of gender identity that permeated the culture. Teenage girls were expected to sing and play the piano so as to appear more attractive to their potential husbands. Solie writes, “…girling is the social process that forms girls appropriate to the needs of the society they live in; on the other, it is their own enactment…of girlhood, both to satisfy familial and social demands on them and…to satisfy needs of their own either to resist those demands or to reassure themselves about their own capacity to fulfill them.”[1]
Playing the piano was so much more than cultivating a skill. It put women in their place, so to speak. It calmed a father or husband’s nerves after a long day. In class today Professor Leonard read an excerpt from “The Angel in the House,” a popular Victorian poem by Coventry Patmore which perfectly illuminates the expectations of a Victorian woman.[2] We deduced in class that a woman’s role in the Victorian Era was to serve her husband, to only give and receive love when it was convenient for the man, and to be a pinnacle of calm and contentment when the man was in a bad mood. This sentiment sounds more like an abusive relationship than an ideal marriage.
As is evident from “The Angel in the House”, Victorian “girling” also brings up issues of gender polarity. There were many writings of the Victorian Era that define Man and Woman in absolute terms: “Man is bold-woman is beautiful. Man is courageous-woman is timid. Man labors in the field – woman at home.”[3] When I read this I thought of some of my friends at Mount Holyoke that are the antithesis of what a woman “should” be. They are bold, courageous, laboring rugby players. From the article I gathered that some women accepted their fate, while others hated playing the piano, their strict schedules, and what each represented. Even more interesting is Florence Nightingale, who enjoyed the “girling” of her youth, yet remained unmarried through her life, and revolutionized the modern-day nursing field. Whatever the woman’s sentiment, she could not escape the oppressive symbolism of this black-and-white instrument.
Your experiences at an all-women's college is very valuable--it's great that you're able to pull all of these threads together and share them with the class.
ReplyDelete