Gender Roles and Walsingham's Emotions

This blog post is going to be a close reading of page 268-269. Immediately Walsingham’s sensibility caught my attention “my mind being much depressed on the following morning, I declined going down to breakfast.” As I have gathered from the book so far, Walsingham is an emotional person and unlike most men he seems to really dwell in whatever feeling his is feeling at the moment. Although he desires to miss the breakfast meal he is still concerned about Mrs. Woodford’s perception of him and the possibility of offending her. “Mrs. Woodford, fearing that my absence proceeded from indisposition, made me a visit of inquiry, and expressed her concern in language so friendly, that my spirits experienced a momentary renovation”. Even though Walsingham is attempting to polite and not offend, he continues to be dramatic and sulk in his sadness, “I still requested that she would excuse me at dinner, and remained in my chamber, wholly subdued by melancholy reflections”. As we have discussed in previous classes, Walsingham is very theatrical and introspective to the point of irritation for the reader and at times it is almost humorous. Continuing onto page 269, Walsingham declares that he “was grieved to find that Miss Woodford would shortly be torn from [his] society” because “she was the only solace [he] could find, alone as I was, even amidst multitudes of men”. Walsingham is displaying he is an unusual male character based on the fact that most men love the company of other men. One can infer that since Walsingham is such a sensible creature that he prefers to be around women because they are more tender than men. This brief section of the text, and really more broadly in the book’s entirety, strays far from typical gender roles as Walsingham has so many emotions which is more associated with a female gender role than that of a male gender role.