Domestic Spaces in The Lamplighter Blog #4 by Larisa

This week I have done little reading. I have mostly been looking for sources about Marion Harland and fortunately have found a few articles and many primary texts that I hope to use for my mid-semester project. The reading I have done has been about domestic spaces and domesticity, from Clifford Edward Clark, Jr.’s The American Family Home 1800-1960. His ideas have caused me to think differently and see domestic spaces differently in novels. A few ideas that I was aware of before was the importance of domestic space, especially for women to fulfill their roles as wives and mothers. But I had not really analyzed how the house and the space was feminized until reading Clark’s ideas and listened to discussions in Dr. Gaul’s class last week about The Lamplighter. Many of the students pointed out that Gerty’s models of domesticity were closely intertwined with inside spaces. These women follow the prescribed ideals of True Womanhood that Barbara Welter points out, such as piety, purity, domesticity, and submission. For instance, Mrs. Sullivan is never seen outside her home. We do see Emily Graham outside the home, but she is rarely in an outside space, and we see that she is more comfortable inside--such as the house, a church, a private room in a hotel, or retiring in the ladies’ lounge. Patty Pace is often seen outside and in other people’s domestic spaces, but she is not really a true mentor to Gerty. She is merely a foil to Gerty who shows us what Gerty could become if she puts off domesticity and marriage until it is too late.

Using these ideas and insights gained from class discussion, I looked again at the reconciliation scene between Gertrude, Phillip Amory, and Emily Graham in The Lamplighter. She first learns about her father’s identity while reading his letters in her own domestic space, her private room. And when she finishes reading his letters, she flies out of the house, into the out of doors where she is very comfortable, but then enters another domestic space, the summer house. It is in that space, a typical meeting space for lovers, that Gertrude and her father profess their love and acceptance of each other as child and parent. Then the scene shifts back into the house where Emily is waiting for Phillip. Interestingly, she does not come outside, but waits in her female space for him to enter. Gertrude describes Emily as waiting, weeping, longing, and praying for Phillip--all characteristics of the true woman. The narrator reminds us that Emily is a girl still, who had “retained much of the freshness and all the loveliness of her girlhood” (394). So it is in the domestic space that this true woman reconciles with her lover--a reconciliation that seems almost a religious experience as Phillip is forgiven and restored to the family he lost. When he parts from Emily, he leaves her in the room. Then Gertrude enters and she and Emily say a prayer together: "Emily, who, kneeling by the sofa, with clasped hands, uplifted face, and with her white garments sweeping the floor, looked the very impersonation of purity and prayer. Throwing one arm around her neck, Gertrude knelt on the floor beside her, and together they sent up to the throne of God the incense of thanksgiving and praise!” (401). The narrator leaves us in no doubt that Emily and Gertrude are True Women and that their domestic space is what Clark calls a “family altar…more venerable than any altar in the cathedral” (29). True to the tenets of the cult of domesticity, it is the women, not the man in the family that participates in religious ritual.

Reading Clark’s ideas and thinking about the cult of domesticity has also led me to see familiar texts in a new light. For example, last night I watched the last half of the new Masterpiece Theatre version of Sense & Sensibility. I have read the book many times, seen different movie versions, but what struck me this time was the importance of the houses and the domestic spaces in the film. One of the sisters, Elinor, paints a watercolor of their former mansion and hangs it on the wall of their new little cottage when they move in. The painting seems to be all that they have left of their former wealth and seems to remind them of that constantly as it hangs over the fireplace in the main parlor. Anyone walking into the room would immediately see the painting. But at the film’s end, Eleanor has painted a watercolor of the little cottage. She removes the other painting and hangs the new one over the fireplace. While this act seemed unimportant to me the first time I saw the film, it now takes on new significance after my reading about domestic spaces. Clark points out that in the 19th century, people began to identify themselves with their homes and often had photographs taken outside the home, with the home a central figure in the picture. While Eleanor did not paint her family in the picture, this acceptance of the new and smaller domestic space is signified by the new painting. What else is interesting is that while the sisters are often shown in outdoor spaces, at the film’s conclusion, we see both sisters married--Marianne is carried by her husband over the threshold into her new house and Eleanor is seen happily watching her new husband feed their chickens in their yard. Both women are now married and tied to a domestic space. All these connections I missed before, but now I am seeing them!

I just found this publicity photo online and interestingly, the women are pictured with the cottage in the background. Many other shots have this same background. It is interesting to see them with the cottage, which is not where they start or where they finish in the film's action.
http://www.videodetective.com/photos/1275/Sense5.jpg