Shades

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Frances is sent to Grahamstown to stay with Victor's mother and prepare for her inevitable wedding. In the meantime, Walter's nightmare becomes a reality: he is assigned to Mbokothwe, the mission station which he feared the most.

The Victorian Age — named after Queen Victoria who ruled the British Empire for 63 years (1837-1901) — was marked by a deeply conservative morality. Indeed, it was a morality which covered every facet of society from sexual mores to codes of dress.

The Victorians were essentially middle class English, caught up in a very strict religion. They were wealthy but believed their wealth came as a blessing from God.

But what God gives, He can also take away. If that were to happen, the Victorians believed they would be plunged back into abject poverty.

To avoid such a catastrophe, the Victorians followed a puritan way of life. Anything that brought sin upon their heads was to be avoided.

The ultimate sin lay in unbridled sexuality. Avoidance of temptation therefore lay at the forefront of their morality.

For the Victorians, the purpose of marriage was primarily for the bearing of children and to prevent husbands from burning up with sexual desire. Sex for the wife was therefore a duty and was not meant to be pleasurable. It was, however, something that was strictly to be confined to marriage.

Sexual rules were therefore simple: there could be no sex until after marriage. Even kissing was considered dangerous.

A woman who lost her virginity outside of marriage was regarded as "fallen" and therefore a harlot. Indeed, few men would seek a marital alliance with such a person.

Since middle class Victorian women were not expected to work, a good marriage was therefore essential to them. A "fallen" woman, however, had little marital prospects and was therefore doomed to a life of poverty.

On the other hand, couples did engage in sex outside of marriage but, if they were found out — usually by an unexpected pregnancy — it was expected that they would immediately marry. Indeed, not to marry would bring humiliation to the whole family.

Should a father even suspect that a prospective marital partner was having sex with his daughter, he was justified in forcing the young man into marriage.

The Victorians were also noted for their dress codes. Men always wore long pants, polished shoes, jacket, tie and hat on almost all occasions.

Women ensured that almost every part of their bodies was covered: long-sleeved dresses with the lace overlapping the wrist, high collars and wide skirts which reached to the ankles. Corsets were popular as a means of keeping the waistline narrow.

Men were never to be seen nude or semi-nude in front of a woman. Women were in fact expected to avert their eyes even if the man was merely without his shirt.

Women were certainly never to be seen nude or semi-nude in front of a man, even if that man was her husband. Sex within marriage therefore happened in the dark and usually fully dressed in bed-clothes. The woman's night-dress might be rolled up but not removed!

When it came to sea-bathing, separate areas were designated for men and for women. Women were often taken out into the breakers on board bathing booths on wheels, so that the men would not even see them alighting into the water.

Even so, the ankle length skirts of their bathing costumes were weighed down with lead pellets lest the skirt float and reveal even so much as the woman's legs under the water.

Have you looked at the questions
in the right column?

Read the notes in the left column before answering the questions below:

How does one explain Emily's coldness of heart as is revealed in the opening pages of this chapter? (5)

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You need to read the text thoroughly to answer this. Emily, in her early days at the mission, seems to have made "pacts" with God — promising that, if God gave her safe delivery of her first two babies, they would become priests. Such a pact is, of course, unacceptable — it is akin to Abraham's offering Isaac's life to God. When God appears to reject her pact — and her first two children are stillborn — Emily becomes bitter. She presumably believes it is her sin that has led to this punishment and her reaction then is to become even more committed to God which, ironically, leads her away from being a good mother. Helmina is thereupon entrusted with the task of raising Frances and Crispin. Emily, instead of being a warm mother, becomes an embittered one. Instead of being a warm-hearted humanist, therefore, she becomes a harsh enforcer of the law, no matter how much suffering this causes.

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"No, Helmina had missed none of them. None. And those she had not seen, she had invented. She could feel the tears herself, crowding in behind her lids. How closely and how damningly she faced her own deceit."

• Comment on these lines as a reflection of Helmina Smythe's attitude and thoughts. (5)

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As a Victorian and a Christian, one would have expected Helmina to be the model of virtue. She believed that even thinking of sexual intercourse was a sin. Yet Helmina thinks of it regularly, watches Victor's every action — and even invents scenes in her mind. There is implicit in these words that sex is often on Helmina's mind, and therefore she damns herself by these thoughts — and damns herself for not reporting on Victor's actions. Of course, Helmina knows exactly why she has been deceitful — she had wanted Frances to fall pregnant, thereby forcing her into a marriage with Victor and leaving Walter for herself.

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Walter feels he has failed Frances.

• Has he failed her? What else could he have done to help her? (5)

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It's very difficult to see what else Walter could have done. In terms of the morality of the times, Frances and Victor were indeed married from the moment they had sexual intercourse even if Frances had not consented to it. As a gentleman, Walter could not come between them while, at the same time, to have shown any physical affection to Frances would have been akin to committing adultery. Could he therefore have been any more demonstrative in his affection?

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Why is Frances sent to Grahamstown? (5)

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When Frances confessed to her mother that she and Victor had had sexual intercourse, her mother had very little option but to prepare for her wedding to Victor. In the first place, intercourse for a person like Emily meant that the marriage had already been consummated. Second, since Frances had not said when this action had taken place, Emily would presume that it was a continuous relationship and that Frances could already be pregnant. The confession had then happened in front of Helmina and so could not be hidden even if Emily had wished to do so. In terms of strict Victorian morals, therefore, there was little option but for Frances to be sent to Grahamstown to prepare for the wedding which would take place as soon as possible. Please note, however, that Frances was NOT sent to Grahamstown because she was pregnant. She certainly was not pregnant. That is something made very clear in an earlier chapter.

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Explain Helmina's reaction to Walter's transfer to Mbokothwe. (5)

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Helmina saw blessings and sin in everything. She presumably saw Walter's arrival at St Matthias as a blessing. When she realised that there was a chance of losing him to Frances, however, she embarked on many stratagems — including lies — to keep them apart. When news arrived of Walter's transfer to Mbokothwe, therefore, she had to perceive it in terms of punishment from God for her lies and her subterfuge. She would naturally believe that God had deliberately intervened to take Walter away from her because of her deceit to Frances, Walter and Emily. That's how her world and her superstitions worked.

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