Nancy Armstrong and Desire and Domestic Fiction

In Desire and Domestic Fiction, Armstrong is primarily dealing with 18^th and 19^th century British literature that was written by and/or for women and the various aspects and results of such a category of text. She examines its connection with the rise of the English middle class, sexual relationships, political power, and how we think of ourselves and each other as individuals.

Three main points that Armstrong argues:

History of Domestic Fiction

1. Sexuality is a cultural construct and has a history
2. Written representations of self allowed the modern individual to become an economic and psychological reality
3. The modern individual was a woman

I will now post some excerpts from my essay, but please feel free to ask any questions that may not be adequately addressed here. Armstrong's arguments are detailed and interesting, and I could not include everything!

To understand the relationship between the sexes, Armstrong first employs Rousseau’s The Social Contract. This social contract becomes integral in domestic fiction when authors convert it into a sexual contract which requires the female to “relinquish political control to the male in order to acquire exclusive authority over domestic life, emotions, taste, and morality” (31). In these domestic fiction narratives, the female was awarded with economic security for her submission to the traditional role as a subordinate. It is important to note that in such a contract, despite the need for subordination, two parties are needed. Women are not completely removed from the process, but rather are a significant and vital part. Therefore, women are even granted power and knowledge completely unique from that of men: a control over the domestic realm and interpersonal relationships. In utilizing this sexual contract in texts, domestic fiction was able to incorporate politics in the sexual relationships while still residing in the feminine domestic sphere. However, like Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice or Richardson’s Pamela, the end of the novel will see the female protagonist still submissive to the male’s power and protection. Armstrong argues that in these male/female relationships, the social competition is sexualized and then suppressed while still being experienced.

An integral part to Armstrong’s argument is the importance she stresses on conduct books and their crucial role in the rise of an English middle class. Before conduct books of the seventeenth century, the ideal woman was different depending on class status. However, conduct books universalized the qualities that women should possess and provided detailed descriptions and breakdowns of a household budget so the prescribed type of living could be had by all. Yet, even though these conduct books may have encouraged a lifestyle equally attainable by those of varying incomes, they are united against the aristocracy. For example, conduct books criticized any indulgence in dress, house, spending, education, or even leisure activities, extravagances that would be associated with the aristocracy. Instead, the goodness of the female is in the moral depths beyond her surface and neither on her material body nor her class status.

Like Ian Watt, Armstrong is invested in the emergence of individualism as an important aspect in the rise of the domestic novel. By removing characters’ personality traits and motivations from their class structure, domestic novels separate gender from the political realm, and because the domestic was created in opposition to the political, the female was first differentiated from the male. These fictional characters were presented as unique individuals with distinctive moral and mental characteristics that were not indicative of their class or status, but rather of their own personal subjectivity. This was instrumental in the development of the novel as a genre and in its separation from romances. Fiction was now able to present characters that were uniquely different from one another, rather than just placeholders for themes.

This assertion of individual subjectivity is not just interesting in the psychological development of the modern subjectivity, but in its assertion of a completely independent and autonomous female subjectivity that exists outside of interpersonal relationships with men. Like many of Armstrong’s arguments and their implications, this applies readily to Pamela. Pamela’s body is hers before it is owned by Mr. B and she therefore has the power to withhold it from her master. Mr. B soon realizes Pamela’s autonomy and includes her in the negotiation of her body by presenting her with a contract. Armstrong writes, “By making the female party to the contract, Richardson implies an independent party with whom the male has to negotiate, a female self who exists outside and prior to the relationships under the male’s control” (113). Prior to the relationship with the male and thus prior to the emergence of a political realm, there is gender and there is desire. One is not made through these associations, but already exists as a complete and autonomous subjectivity. This has strong implications, as Armstrong writes, “If a servant girl could claim possession of herself as her own first property, then virtually any individual must similarly have a self to withhold or give in a modern form of exchange with the state” (118). This is a strong Lockian assertion, granting the power of self-government to not only women, but also to the laboring classes. The novel thus presents the trajectory of a unique individual that begins to play out in the burgeoning middle class and the power soon attributed to women.