Volume IV, much like Desmond,
ended with the sort of ending that left the main character, Walsingham, in a
good position for himself, "wild with the agony of joy" (495). However, it causes the audience to question whether
it was supposed to be a “happy ending” or not. The way that Walsingham is
exasperating and generally awful doesn’t particularly encourage the reader to
root for him, which also makes it hard to want Sidney to end up with him. She
ends up losing her disguise and becoming the wife of Walsingham, who has a
controlling a nature over women. In this way, Robinson lends an example of how
gender roles have imprisoned Sidney; Sir Sidney had the ability to be sensible
in an honorable way, to do what he wished and have any privilege that a man of
the time would have. When it is revealed that Sir Sidney is a woman, she is
immediately forced on Walsingham, where “the hour [arrives] when [Walsingham]
must allow her a dearer title, or avoid her society for ever” (493). I think it
is intentional that Robinson puts the main men of the story, Walsingham and Mr.
Hanbury, to the task of deciding Sidney’s fate, and then omits any further
mention of her for the final page of the novel. You’d think that there would be
more references to Sidney after the big reveal and then the marriage, but
instead Walsingham describes how the day has “overpaid [Walsingham] ten-fold
for all the anguish [he has] hitherto experienced” (495). Again, he prioritizes
his own wants and overlooks Sidney entirely. Up to this point, we have had
plenty of Sidney’s guilt and emotion, but now when it seems she could be
finding happiness, there is no mention of it, which is suspicious and leads the
reader to believe she might not be happy at all.
I believe Walsingham is so willing to accept Sir Sidney as a
woman and marry her because this whole time he has believed her to be his rival, “born to hate [Sidney] forever”, and now he feels he has “been deprived of such a
pure and generous friend,” which Sidney desperately wanted to be to Walsingham
(406, 493). Now that his idea of the hierarchy of gender is shattered by Lady
Aubrey's admission, he must make sense of what’s happened, and his way of doing that is by
marrying Sidney. By marrying her, she is forced into the societal role assigned
to a woman, taking away the privileged man he had been so threatened by. This
puts things back in order for him, and now he is able to control something he
hadn’t been able to control before.
I also think it's interesting that things seem to "magically" work out for Walsingham. I'm not exactly sure what Robinson is trying to get at through the ending. For me, it was particularly frustrating because Walsingham is so detestable. Not only does his rival turn out to be a woman, she also happens to be madly in love with him, giving him the ability to re-gain everything he lost in the beginning. I'm unsure as to whether or not Sidney is unhappy in the marriage, I think her opinion is unimportant at that point.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it was hard to read the ending of the novel when there was such an intense hatred for Walsingham. I understand how, in class, we discussed how Sidney serves as some sort of "answer" for Walsingham's sad life but we as readers still want to question Sidney for her affection for this man. I personally would have liked to see more of there union at the end to get a better view of how Sidney feels about how things ended. It would at least answer whether or not Walsingham really did marry her only to bring some sort of odd purpose back into this hierarchy that he so strongly believes in.
ReplyDeleteI find the idea that Walsingham shoved Sidney back into the appropriate "box" by marrying her absolutely fascinating. Moreover, I find it interesting what this says about women and education. By ending the novel with Sidney married to Walsingham, the narrative seems to imply that it doesn't matter even if the woman attains the best form of blended education: she will still wind up married to a selfish, self-centered man with no voice for herself.
ReplyDeleteIn my writing classes, I have learned that it is just as much about what the author doesn't say as what they do say. I agree that the lack of Sidney's own perspective in the end has a very definite meaning, even if we aren't completely sure as to what. I also like the idea that you brought up that Walsingham marries Sidney and accepts her as a woman so quickly in order to re-construct his world back to the perfectly boxed thing it was and, to his belief, always should have been. This makes me think of Vindication of the Rights of Woman, however, because he does this through marriage. Sidney is a woman of a mixed education, which is what Vindication was about, and how this would make women better partners for men. And I just think it's interesting to keep that idea in mind when reading this ending. Even though this is what should be the 'perfect' situation for the marriage, we as readers are unhappy with the result. We've come to dislike Walsingham and I wonder what comparing these two results would yield in a discussion between authors and readers.
ReplyDeleteI really like your reading of the reason why Walsingham married Sidney is to rearrange his shattered gendered norms. That's not the way that I read it but it makes for a very interesting reading. I agree with you that Sidney didn't actually gain anything and this ending was similar to Desmond with the main male character achieving their happiness while the woman's happiness isn't really addressed. I found the ending a little frustrating. I can't exactly articulate why it was so irritating but I think it's mostly because I wanted Robinson to do something with Sidney. I definitely didn't want Sidney to just go back to the acceptable female role at the end like she did. There is room to question her happiness but it is still overall unsatisfying to me.
ReplyDelete