The Angel in the House

"The Angel in the House" is a poem by Coventry Patmore, first published in 1854 and revised up until 1862. Although largely ignored upon publication, it became enormously popular during the nineteenth century and its influence continued well into the twentieth. The poem, an account of Patmore's wife, Emily, whom he believed to be the perfect Victorian wife, described the perfect Victorian wife: "She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed daily. If there was a chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught she sat in it ... Above all, she was pure." (Woolf, 1966: 2, 285)

The ideal

Following the publication of Patmore's poem, the term "angel in the house" came to be used in reference to women who embodied the Victorian feminine ideal: a wife and mother who was selflessly devoted to her children and submissive to her husband. Adèle Ratignolle, a character in Kate Chopin's novel "The Awakening", is a literary example of the "angel in the house."

Another example is in the "What Katy Did" novels of Susan Coolidge about a pre-pubescent tomboy who becomes a paraplegic. They are based on her own life in 19th Century America. Katy eventually walks again, but not before she learns to become the "angel in the house", that is, the socially acceptable "ideal" of docile womanhood.

Another example is Thomas Hardy's "The Return of the Native", in which Thomasin Yeobright is also described as 'the angel of the house'. Thomasin is the antithesis to Hardy's main female protoganist, Eustacia Vye, who is the opposite of the Victorian female 'ideal'.

Critics

Later feminist writers have had a less positive view of the Angel. Nel Noddings views her as "infantile, weak and mindless" (1989: 59) and Virginia Woolf famously wrote that she "bothered me and wasted my time and so tormented me that at last I killed her" (Woolf, 1966: 2, 285).

External links

* [http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/anghs10.txt Text of "The Angel in the House" by Coventry Patmore]
* [http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/thackeray/angel.html Definition of "angel in the house"]
* [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:fpfuxq8gldde] 1993 The Angel In The House full-length recording by The Story.

References

Noddings, 1984. "Women and Evil" (Berkeley: University of California Press)

Woolf, 1966. "Professions for Women", "Collected Essays" (London: Hogarth Press)