"Worthy Ambition": Religion and Domesticity in the Daisy Chain

Charlotte Yonge's two-novel sequence The Daisy Chain and The Trial, which chronicles the fortunes of the large family of May siblings, is one of the most typical and fully realized examples of nineteenth-century domestic realism. Yonge is as famous for detailed and minute depictions of family dynamics as she is for conservative religion and politics, and chronicles always lend their realism to advancing the ideas of the Oxford Movement and domestic ideology. Yonge's very commitment to realism, however, with its reportorial detail and fine discriminations of emotional states, frequently leads to depict situations that do not accord completely with narrator's overt ideological agendas. As Talia Schaffer neatly summarizes this phenomenon, her commitment to realism made chronicle that undermine politics (245). (1) The undermining is most apparent in the realm of gender politics, and The Daisy Chain, one of most popular novels, embodies that dual movement in charting the spiritual ambitions of its protagonist, Etheldred May. Ethel is both intellectually accomplished, keeping up with the classical studies of brother Norman purely for the fun of it, and also deeply spiritual, perhaps the most religious of fervently religious family. Her mental proclivities put at odds with destined role as a woman, and much of the plot of The Daisy Chain is concerned with development from a headstrong and impetuous girl into a self-effacing and disciplined woman who sacrifices uncomplainingly for home and family. Yonge cannot, however, bring herself to destroy Ethel's ambitions completely, and in allowing to achieve greatest vision (the building of a church in an underserved rural district near home), Yonge provides a dramatic example of materials that undermine politics. In this particular case, Yonge's commitment to delineating a fully realized and textured character leads to depict a situation in which own political commitments contradict each other; religious piety and gender conformity are not mutually compatible in Ethel's life, and the path the heroine chooses only imperfectly reconciles the two ideologies. A girl who can build a church is admirable, but she is not a pattern-card of ladylike behavior. The unstable ideological valence of the church-building project is symbolized through the associated trope of vision that runs throughout the novel. Ethel May's quest to build a church at Cocksmoor is a sublimation of inability to control own domestic space. is restricted in two ways: physical circumscription to the family home and to native town, which she leaves only twice during the course of two novels; and myopia, which makes unable to and adequately control physical surroundings. The latter of these is a particularly poignant restriction, because mother and brother Harry object to wearing glasses in order to correct vision, and yet mother also forbids to carry the baby because she is blind (16). Ethel's father and brother wear spectacles throughout both novels, and by the time of The Trial, old maid Ethel has begun to do so as well. In youth, she occasionally borrows father's glasses for a quick, snatched chance at the pleasures of being able to what is far away. But for most of The Daisy Chain, Ethel's myopia is a direct bodily manifestation of a woman's restricted role. Ethel's frustration over this role makes all the more fervent in desire to see transcendent space, and eventually to control it. After first visit to the Cocksmoor quarry district, she conceives of lifelong project--her worthy ambition (25)--specifically as a vision, in which she casts herself as the sole benefactor: She would compose, publish, earn money--some day call papa, show him hoard, beg him to take it, and, never owning whence it came, raise the building. Spire and chancel--pinnacle and buttress, rose before eyes (25). …