Cranford and the Darwinian Model--Up for debate...

We have used the Darwinian model of sexual selection rather fruitfully for discussion of Villette and Rob Roy as Chick-Lit and Lad-Lit genres. However, I found that this model was not as easily applicable to my analysis of mating behaviour in Cranford, particularly because Cranford is a novel more invested in the importance of female bonding and female relationships than in mating behaviour. As we are told right from the beginning of the novel, Cranford is “in possession of the Amazons”—it is a society of women.

This is not to say that mating doesn’t happen, but I would argue it is secondary to the female relationships and subject to scrutiny by Cranford society. The couplings and near-couplings in the novel— Jessie Brown and Major Gordon, Miss Matty Jenkyns and Mr. Holbrook, Lady Glenmire and Mr. Hoggins, Martha and Jem Hearn —do not follow the model of sexual selection that we have discussed thus far. For one, the males have very few other males to compete with. Instead the males are in competition with Cranford’s society of women. While Jessie Brown and Miss Matty certainly appear to fulfill the role of the passive female in the Darwinian model, their matches are subject to the approval of a third party female and upstanding member of Cranford society, Miss Deborah Jenkyns. In the case of Martha and Jem Hearn, Hearn certainly pursued Martha to begin with, but her having a gentleman caller is also subject to the approval of Miss Matty. Moreover, it is Martha who persuades Jem Hearn to marry her (or at least speeds the process)—when Miss Matty goes bankrupt.

Next, I would like to do a brief close reading of how the Cranford women cut down male competition as they speculate upon the marriage of Lady Glenmire and Mr. Hoggins. When the two are first engaged, the narrator (later named as Mary Smith) describes the Cranford ladies' opinion of the engagement:

Had he ever been to see Lady Glenmire at Mrs. Jamiesons? [...] Or had thier interviews been confined to the occaisional meetings in the chamber of the poor sick conjurer? [...] And now it turned out that a servant of Mrs. Jamieson's had been ill, and Mr. Hoggins had been attending her for some weeks. So the wolf had got into the fold, and now he was carrying off the shepardess. (115).

Here, the ladies of Cranford write a familiar gender stereotype: the male as stocking and preying on the female. the wolf waiting to prey upon an innocent passive female.
Maggie suggested to me the other day that Cranford is a light-hearted satire on English small town life, aristocracy, and social society. Perhaps we could also read this scene as a lightly satirical nudge at the way Cranford women construct male identity to bolster their own society. I find it hard to take Mary Smith's comments seriously when she has told us before that Mr. Hoggins, despite his name, is a decent man and a good doctor. She says that the Cranford women consider Mr. Hoggins “a very worthy man, and a very clever surgeon” (103). However she is careful to point out that Mr. Hoggins reputation as a good man is only good in so far as his identity “as a doctor” (103). Having come from a family of farmers and proven no aristocratic ties to Cranford society, Mary Smith highlights the point that Hoggins’ reputation is limited by his class position. Mary’s subtle critique of Cranford’s societal judgements force me to rethink her framing Hoggins as a wolf-like male preying on Lady Glenmire--an unsuspecting passive female.

In short, Cranford complicates the Darwinian model of sexual selection. Male suitors are not competing with one another but with a society of women. Moreover, the the satirical tones of the novel poke fun at old stereotypes and gesture towards a rethinking of Darwins model as we have studied thus far.