Dickens only appears in the background of this story, although the stamp of his concerns and values are everywhere. The Household is the story of historic Urania Cottage, an establishment set up by Dickens in the mid 1840s for ‘fallen women’, told through the eyes of two of the women and also their benefactrix, Angela Burdett-Coutts. So much misogyny in that word ‘fallen’ when you’d think falling is something a woman is capable of doing on her own. Expressions like The girls fell pregnant” and “…poor Lydia Rice had started a child” manage, so wonderfully, to excuse men of responsibility entirely.
At Urania Cottage the aim is to help these women rise up and help themselves by teaching them domestic skills before sending them off to Australia, God help them, to find useful jobs and husbands. Help both noble and patronising in that ridiculous Victorian way that pulls your heart.
Most of the money for the household comes through Dickens’ friends, in particular the real Burdett-Coutts, a fascinating high-society heiress, with a soft spot for charities concerning women and children. (She really was an extraordinary philanthropist, well worth a google.) This story focuses on her private life and a psychopathic stalker who, when not in jail, preys on her mercilessly. I never really got to the core of this character, who we are told throws fabulous parties and loves company but lives quietly with an older married couple for companionship and seems shy and solitary. She makes friends with the young ex-prostitutes and/or thieves. Worthy ones. You know, like in Dickens.
Women were such footnotes in the 1840s. Not interesting. Even in Angela’s perception her dinner guests are: actors, singers, bankers, bishops, scientists and scholars and their wives. My emphasis as she didn’t give them one. There is a strange sub-plot which perhaps could give us an insight into Angela’s character as she engages in a non-requited love affair with a father figure, the duke, but without more development I found this just confused her character.
The women at Urania Cottage are selected from the prisons, girls near release with good habits, and the house is offered as an alternative to life back on the streets. They’re promised clean clothing, good meals, an education in the bible and literacy, domestic skills. The prospect of emigration shines for those who want to break the shackles of London poverty and better themselves.
It is a guilded cage. They women are locked in.
They are all suspicious. Their concern, obviously, is what will be wanted from them in return for a safe bed, the square meals? You can excuse them for thinking emigration to Australia might be a trick. I thought it was a trick because I’ve read Dickens and know this is his favourite ending for ambiguous characters, (and on that subject I strongly recommend Tom Keneally’s The Dicken’s Boy where even his sons are sent off to Australia to better themselves). The girls are told not to discuss their pasts with each other, to leave them behind and start afresh, but the pasts is always there, and of course, pulls them. They have family and friends outside. Starving and cold and living dangerous lives, situations the girls know and expect out of life. Some girls run back to these lives immediately.
Josephine had fallen in love when in prison with a fellow inmate. Annie tricks her into entering Urania Cottage alone, hoping it will save her. Josephine pines until she finds a way to escape back to Annie and we see the contrast with life on the outside and in. In Urania cottage the matron is responsible and the girls have every opportunity to prosper. Outside a young convict girl without a family is fodder.
Martha, the house’s first occupant, is diligent and good, learns quickly and becomes the pride of the matron and patrons. She’s keen to better herself. But her young sister is missing and the mystery of her disappearance drives Martha to drastic acts.
Dickens, we hear, occasionally drops in for the afternoon. He has access to the girls because he wants to hear their stories. This is his reward for the cottage, this exposure to an authentic wealth of character and circumstance with which to populate his great works, all the poor unfortunates of England. Here they are, lots of fallen girls, prostitutes and thieves, open for questions. Kind of creepy, but also good to know Dickens did his research so thoroughly. I find it hard to judge the morality of his motives from this distance.
The dangling threat of Angela’s stalker winds its way through the book and the crisis comes at his hands, the harm well wrapped and the bait taken. Horrible.
Lots of great themes in this book: freedom, exploitation, the imbalance of society and gender, and a good slice of very readable history.
Now it is November, the infirmary is full, and the morgue waits below like a baby bird with its beak open. How very beautifully Dickensian.
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