Fuck Charles Dickens

On Women, Wives and Artists Waiting To Be Born

Photo Credit: Aaron Burden

Last winter, I went to the Charles Dickens Museum in London. I love house museums; the feeling that I’m stepping back in time and getting to know the most intricate details of how life was back then. But when I went to Charles Dickens’ house, I could not enjoy the grandfather clocks, or the burgundy hardwood desk where he wrote his most famous works, or the fresh smell of weathered stone in the basement kitchen. Instead, I was overwhelmed by one thought which burned through my body: the 1800s was an absolutely shit time to be a woman.

Even though the Dickens family lived in relative luxury for the time, the story behind their long, lapping carpeted staircases and blue silk walls made me genuinely angry. The family had 10 children and a small army of manservants, which meant that Dickens’ wife Catherine and her sister Georgina Hogarth devoted their entire lives to raising the children and managing the house. Meanwhile, Charles Dickens sat in his study and churned out chapters of Pickwick Papers and Bleak House, making a fortune and acquiring one of the greatest legacies in English literature.

To her credit, Catherine did author one cookbook under the pseudonym Lady Maria Clutterbuck. It was called “What Shall we Have for Dinner? Satisfactorily Answered by Numerous Bills of Fare for from Two to Eighteen Persons”. Yet her only published creative project can’t seem to escape from the magnitude of her domestic affairs. Can you imagine being pregnant 10 times? Then caring for all the children, making sure they didn’t die from scarlet fever or cholera? Jesus H. Christ. It must have been an absolute nightmare.

Portrait of Catherine (Hogarth) Dickens

And it was. Their 9th child and youngest daughter, Dora Annie Dickens, died when she was seven months old. After that, Catherine had a mental breakdown, and she never wrote again. Then, over the next few years, Charles Dickens blamed her for having so many children because they were a financial burden to him. He tried to get her committed to an insane asylum because he thought she was an incompetent mother and housekeeper, and divorce wasn’t an option. Meanwhile, he started having multiple affairs, including with his young mistress, Ellen Ternan. When I think of this great figure in English literature now, a string of expletives and words like “asshole” come to mind.

Unfortunately, the experiences of Catherine Dickens and Georgina Hogarth are far from isolated. Born only a couple years after Catherine Dickens died, Virginia Woolf addresses this topic in “A Room of One’s Own”. She says,

“But for women…these difficulties were infinitely more formidable. In the first place, to have a room of her own, let alone a quiet room or a soundproof room, was out of the question, unless her parents were exceptionally rich or very noble…It is fairly evident that even in the 19th century a woman was not encouraged to be an artist. On the contrary, she was snubbed, slapped, lectured and exhorted.”

I noticed this exact sentiment in a fainter but just as insidious way when I visited Sir John Soane’s Museum in London. The museum is made up of three gorgeous, combined townhouses, and named after Sir John Soane, the man of the house who was also a famous architect. I received a barrage of information about Soane’s career. I passed his giant portrait hanging in the drawing room. I admired his extensive collection of paintings, sculptures, architectural drawings and Ancient Egyptian sarcophaguses with hieroglyphics on them. And then, just as I turned to leave, I almost missed a small portrait of a woman hanging in one of the back galleries: Soane’s wife, Miss Elizabeth (Eliza) Smith, who died in 1815.

Portrait of Eliza (Smith) Soane

Perhaps Eliza Smith was a quiet woman who didn’t want to be in the limelight, I wondered to myself. But something didn’t add up. How had Soane gone from being in debt and struggling to get his career off the ground to a successful architect who was wealthy enough to build himself a stellar museum? It turns out that Eliza inherited a huge fortune when her wealthy uncle died. So Eliza inherits the money, then John has an extraordinary creative career, acquires problematic art pieces from all over the world, and then still to this day has a museum in his honour? Apart from “The Eliza Trail” on the museum’s website, she barely gets as much as a mention on his detailed Wikipedia page.

I am envious, in a way. I agree with Virginia Woolf; it would be great if more women had a room of their own and a basic level of financial independence. But this opened my eyes to a new, bolder marker of privilege: having a wife to take care of all your needs and do chores for you. It reminds me of the married men in my writing groups, who don’t have to pay for editors because their wives go over everything they’ve written before they click “Publish”. I want a wife. Or, in the case of John Soane and Eliza Smith, I want a rich wife who will busy herself with managing the team of house help, so I can get back to work.  

It depresses me to dwell on how many women throughout history never got around to painting the painting or writing the poem. It also depresses me to think that most women will never get that extra leg up of having a wife (although the house husbands trend on TikTok suggests otherwise). Yet Woolf offers us more reasons to persevere in “A Room of One’s Own”,

“Shakespeare had a sister; but…She died young – alas, she never wrote a word…Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the cross–roads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here to–night, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh…For my belief is that if we live another century or so…and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think…Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born.”

Woolf published this in 1929, and indeed, here I am almost 100 years later, trying to do exactly what she prophesied. I may not have a wife, or a small army of house help like Charles Dickens or Sir John Soane. But your support as a reader of my Substack is enabling me to have a room of my own. And I am returning the favour by doing my best to say exactly what I think.

It reminds me of the messages I got from my female ancestors when I did peyote last year (lol). They told me that for whatever reason, because of their circumstances, education, religion, marriage, and probably the endless childbearing, they weren’t able to do it. They weren’t able to tell their stories. They weren’t able to record history as they saw it. But they did pass the baton through time, so that we, alive and well today, could receive it. So that we could take a stab at expressing ourselves. So that we could embody the artist, Shakespeare’s sister, who was never born. It hurts to reckon with the past. But no matter what our ancestors endured, we must remember: we are now the sharpest point in the spear.

So, I want to know: what are you attempting that your ancestors never had the opportunity to do? What creative outlet or art form is calling you? Are you answering the call, or pretending not to hear it? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.