Seduced and abandoned: fallen women in the Victorian novel

What was the 'fallen woman' plot?

The 'fallen woman' plot is the story of a woman who loses her place in society after sex outside marriage, usually through seduction by a man of higher rank, and who then faces ruin, repentance or death ^[7]. Wikipedia defines the 'fallen woman' as an archaic term for a woman who had lost her innocence and fallen from God's grace, and says that in nineteenth-century Britain it became closely tied to the loss of chastity and to promiscuity ^[7]. It covered a very wide range of women, from prostitutes to rape victims and working-class women with damaged reputations ^[7].

The plot suited the novel because it combined a private drama with a public verdict. A seduction took place in secret, but its consequences, pregnancy, the loss of a position, gossip and sometimes crime, were visible to the whole community. A novelist could show how a village or a household judged the woman, and ask whether the judgment was just.

The social setting was real. Wikipedia refers to Henry Mayhew's mid-century attempts to count the prostitutes of London, and it describes the rescue homes run mostly by middle-class women, among them Dickens's more humane Urania Cottage ^[7]. It also mentions Josephine Butler's campaign against the Contagious Diseases Acts and William Gladstone's personal work with fallen women ^[7]. For the legal and moral background, see Victorian morality and the double standard.

The theme also appeared in painting, in works such as Holman Hunt's The Awakening Conscience, which is discussed in the fallen woman in Victorian painting. Novels could do something paintings could not: follow the woman's whole story, from before the fall to the aftermath.

Fallen-woman plots in Victorian novels

Novel	Author and date	Heroine	Outcome
Mary Barton	Elizabeth Gaskell, 1848	Esther	Her fall is used to show the gulf between rich and poor; she dies soon after returning to Mary's home [7][11]
David Copperfield	Charles Dickens, 1850	Emily	Dickens rejects the idea that a fallen woman cannot be redeemed; she emigrates to Australia with her uncle [7][12]
Ruth	Elizabeth Gaskell, 1853	Ruth Hilton	Abandoned, she raises her son as a 'widow', nurses the sick and dies of typhus [8]
Adam Bede	George Eliot, 1859	Hetty Sorrel	Tried for child murder and sentenced to hang; the sentence is commuted to transportation, and she dies before reaching England on the way home [1][10]
Far from the Madding Crowd	Thomas Hardy, 1874	Fanny Robin	Abandoned by Troy, she dies in childbirth in the workhouse [5]
Tess of the d'Urbervilles	Thomas Hardy, 1891	Tess Durbeyfield	Her baby dies; she is later executed; the subtitle calls her 'a pure woman' [4]
Esther Waters	George Moore, 1894	Esther Waters	Another treatment of the theme in the 1890s [7]

How does George Eliot treat Hetty Sorrel in Adam Bede?

George Eliot follows Hetty Sorrel from seduction to a trial for child murder, and the novel gives that fate full weight ^[1]. The full text is available as Project Gutenberg eBook 507 ^[2]. Adam Bede, Eliot's first novel, was published on 1 February 1859 by John Blackwood under a pen name, though Mary Ann Evans was already a respected scholar ^[1]. The book is set in the rural community of Hayslope in 1799 ^[1].

In the plot, Arthur Donnithorne seduces Hetty. Adam Bede interrupts a meeting between them, and he and Arthur fight; Arthur then leaves for his militia ^[1]. Hetty, pregnant and unable to find Arthur, gives birth alone and abandons the infant, and the baby dies of exposure ^[1]. She is tried for child murder and sentenced to hang. Dinah Morris, a Methodist preacher, stays with her, and Hetty confesses ^[1]. Arthur returns home for his grandfather's funeral and has the sentence commuted to transportation. Hetty is allowed to return after serving her sentence but dies before reaching England ^[10]. Adam and Dinah eventually marry ^[1].

The novel was based on a real story. Wikipedia reports that the plot is based on a story Eliot heard from her aunt Elizabeth Evans, a Methodist preacher, about a girl's confession of child-murder in prison ^[1]. In chapter 17 Eliot also invites readers to compare her realism with Dutch, Flemish and English genre painting ^[1].

The book was received warmly. The Athenaeum called it a 'novel of the highest class' and The Times a 'first-rate novel', and Charles Dickens praised it, although critics such as Henry James objected to the narrator's interventions ^[1]. The early success also raised questions about who the author was, and a man named Joseph Liggins falsely claimed to be George Eliot ^[6].

The author's own situation gives the book another dimension. Eliot had been living with the philosopher George Henry Lewes since 1854, and Lewes was already married to Agnes Jervis, so the couple could not marry ^[6]. Wikipedia reports that they considered themselves married after a trip to Weimar and Berlin in July 1854, that Eliot signed herself Mary Ann Evans Lewes, and that refusing to hide the relationship drew considerable disapproval ^[6]. Readers who were shocked by the revelations about her private life, it adds, did not turn away from her novels ^[6]. Acceptance in polite society came only in 1877, when the couple were introduced to Princess Louise ^[6].

How does Hardy portray Fanny Robin and Tess?

Hardy portrays Fanny Robin and Tess as women who are wronged by men and then punished by a society that ignores the men's part ^[4][5]. Fanny appears in Far from the Madding Crowd, first published in 1874 anonymously as a serial in The Cornhill Magazine and then in book form under Hardy's name ^[3]. Her story is a subplot to the main courtship of Bathsheba Everdene, but it shapes the whole book.

Fanny is a former servant of Bathsheba Everdene. Before Troy meets Bathsheba, he has promised to marry Fanny. On the wedding day, Fanny goes to the wrong church; Troy, humiliated at being left at the altar, calls off the wedding. Fanny is pregnant with his child, which he does not know ^[5]. Months later, Troy and Bathsheba find Fanny destitute on the road to the Casterbridge workhouse, and Troy gives her the money in his pocket ^[5].

Fanny dies in childbirth at the workhouse, along with her baby, and their coffin is sent to Weatherbury for burial. Gabriel Oak tries to conceal the child's existence, but Bathsheba opens the lid overnight and sees the two bodies. Troy kisses the corpse and tells Bathsheba that Fanny is 'more to me, dead as she is' than Bathsheba has ever been ^[5]. He then pays for a marble tombstone in her memory ^[5]. The scene turns a minor character into the moral centre of the novel, and it gives the reader a view of the cost of Troy's desertion.

Tess takes the theme much further. The novel was serialised in The Graphic in 1891 in a censored form and published in full as a three-volume book the same year, with the subtitle 'A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented' reflecting Hardy's view of his heroine as a virtuous victim of a rigid Victorian moral code ^[4]. Britannica adds that the novel broke from convention by focusing on the rural lower class and by treating sexuality and religion openly ^[4]. The full story is told in the article on Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

The three heroines share a pattern. Hetty, Fanny and Tess are poor women of the countryside, and each is abandoned by a man with greater social power. What distinguishes Hardy is the refusal to blame them. Wikipedia's survey describes Tess as a heroine made 'fallen' by rape, with consequences that are independent of her intent, although Hardy's text leaves the exact nature of the event open ^[7].

Which other novelists took up the theme?

Several other major Victorian novelists wrote fallen-woman plots, often to argue for compassion ^[7][8]. Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton (1848) uses the character of Esther's fall to illustrate the divide between rich and poor, and Esther dies soon after returning to her niece's home ^[7][11]. Dickens's David Copperfield (1850) rejects the idea that a fallen woman cannot be redeemed, and Little Em'ly, rescued after Steerforth deserts her, emigrates to Australia with her uncle ^[7][12]. Dickens also put his ideas into practice at Urania Cottage, a home for women supported by Lady Burdett-Coutts ^[7].

Gaskell's Ruth (1853) is the fullest example. Ruth Hilton is a fifteen-year-old orphan who works in a dressmaking workshop and is seduced by a young aristocrat, Henry Bellingham, who abandons her ^[8]. A Dissenting minister, Thurstan Benson, rescues her, and to protect her the Bensons claim that she is a widow, 'Mrs Denbigh'. She gives birth to a son, Leonard, is later dismissed from a position as a governess when her past is exposed, and becomes a nurse to the poor. She dies of typhus after nursing Bellingham ^[8].

The novel's frankness caused trouble. Wikipedia reports that Gaskell described it as a 'prohibited book' in her own household, that friends expressed deep regret, and that two acquaintances burnt their copies ^[8]. Some reviewers argued that Ruth was too passive a victim, and that Gaskell had piled up so many extenuating circumstances that Ruth hardly represented a typical fallen woman ^[8]. The article describes the novel as a compassionate treatment that anticipated Tess, while noting that, unlike Hardy, Gaskell emphasises Ruth's guilt and her struggle to atone ^[8].

Later in the century, George Moore's Esther Waters (1894) and Tolstoy's Resurrection (1899) took the theme further, the latter focusing on the justice system ^[7]. The motif had become common enough that writers could use it to explore subjects beyond sexual morality itself, including class, law and the nature of social judgment.

Did novelists punish or defend their heroines?

Novelists did both, often in the same book: they showed the heroine's suffering as the result of a harsh social code while still, in many cases, ending with her death or exile ^[1][4][5][8]. The outcomes in the table above are striking. Ruth dies of typhus, Fanny Robin dies in the workhouse, Tess is executed, Esther in Mary Barton dies, and Hetty escapes the gallows only to be transported and to die on the way home ^{[1][4][5][8][10][11]}. Only the moral attitude of the narrator differs.

Readers of the period could take this as a punishment, an appeal for pity or both. Wikipedia notes that Gaskell emphasised Ruth's guilt, while Hardy emphasised Tess's innocence ^[8]. The difference is less about the heroines than about the novelists' understanding of responsibility: for Gaskell, sin needed atonement; for Hardy, the social code was the offender.

Another difference lay in the treatment of the men. Arthur Donnithorne is not punished by law, and the commutation of Hetty's sentence depends on his intervention ^[1]. The double standard, which allowed men to avoid the consequences, is built into the plots.

The effect on readers is hard to measure. The sources opened here report outrage, such as the two burnt copies of Ruth, and also warm praise, such as the reception of Adam Bede ^[1][8]. It would be wrong to say that the novels changed the law, but they shaped a public vocabulary in which a woman's ruin could be discussed with pity.

How did the theme change by the 1890s?

By the 1890s the theme had moved from pleas for compassion towards a direct challenge to the moral code itself, and the novelists met more open resistance ^[4][7]. Hardy's Tess of 1891 is the clearest case. Its subtitle claims purity for a heroine who has borne a child outside marriage, and its serial was cut to satisfy a magazine's idea of what family readers could take ^[4].

The censors and the critics noticed. Britannica states that Tess was published first in a censored serial and then in full ^[4]. Wikipedia's survey adds that Hardy's poem 'The Ruined Maid' takes an ironic view of the very idea of ruin ^[7]. Four years later, Jude the Obscure went further in attacking marriage, as described in the article on Jude the Obscure.

At the same time, the older tradition of rescue and repentance continued. Wikipedia describes rescue and rehabilitation efforts led by middle-class women, and records Jessie Ackermann's argument that men, as well as women, should be treated as sinners ^[7]. Such voices pointed towards the later critique of the double standard, which is a recurring subject in the history of British attitudes to sex outside marriage.

For a reader today, the novels offer a record of how a culture argued with itself. The same society that produced the rescue homes and the Contagious Diseases Acts also produced Adam Bede, Ruth and Tess, and the novels were read by many of the same people.

Frequently asked questions

What happens to Hetty Sorrel in Adam Bede?

Hetty is seduced by Arthur Donnithorne, becomes pregnant, gives birth alone and abandons the baby, which dies of exposure ^[1]. She is tried for child murder and sentenced to hang, but Arthur has the sentence commuted to transportation; she is later allowed to return but dies before reaching England ^[1][10]. Her story is based on a tale that Eliot heard from her aunt ^[1].

Who is Fanny Robin?

Fanny Robin is a former servant of Bathsheba Everdene in Far from the Madding Crowd ^[5]. Sergeant Troy had promised to marry her, but they miss the wedding after she goes to the wrong church; she dies in the Casterbridge workhouse giving birth to his child ^[5]. Her coffin is sent to Weatherbury for burial ^[5].

Was George Eliot herself living outside marriage?

Yes. From 1854 Eliot lived with George Henry Lewes, who was already married to Agnes Jervis, and she called herself Mary Ann Evans Lewes ^[6]. The relationship drew considerable disapproval, but her novels remained popular ^[6]. After Lewes died in 1878 she married John Walter Cross on 16 May 1880 ^[6].

Which Victorian novels were considered scandalous?

Several. Gaskell's Ruth (1853) had copies burnt by two acquaintances, Hardy's Tess (1891) drew reviews calling it disagreeable or immoral ^[9]. Hardy's Jude the Obscure (1895) went further and is covered on its own page. The sources opened here do not list others.

Who seduces Hetty Sorrel?

Arthur Donnithorne, the young squire's heir at Hayslope, seduces her ^[1]. When Adam Bede interrupts a meeting between them, the two men fight, and Arthur leaves to join his militia ^[1].

Is there a happy ending for any of these heroines?

Rarely. Hetty is transported and dies on the way home, Fanny dies in the workhouse, Ruth dies of typhus, Esther in Mary Barton dies and Tess is executed ^{[1][4][5][8][10][11]}. The nearest thing to a new start is Little Em'ly in David Copperfield, who emigrates to Australia ^[12]. The Victorian fallen-woman plot seldom allowed a heroine a full return to society.