Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T10:55:57.114Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

AWKWARD APPENDAGES: COMIC UMBRELLAS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY PRINT CULTURE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 August 2017

Maria Damkjær
Maria Damkjær*
Affiliation:
University of Copenhagen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In a letter “To the Editor of the Times,” a G. S. Hatton of Brompton writes furiously in May 1850:

[This afternoon] three ladies, a member of my family with two friends, visited the Society of Arts in John-street, Adelphi, having ridden all the way from their own doors in a private carriage. Shortly after they had entered the society's rooms, they noticed a tall man of a shabby genteel appearance, with an umbrella in his hand, who was studiously watching their movements, and every now and then placed himself in their way and pushed past them, much to their annoyance. As they were on the point of leaving, he came close to them, and they distinctly felt his umbrella rubbed against them. On regaining their carriage, two of them found the skirts of their dresses bespattered with a most filthy and disgusting semi-fluid, as if propelled from a syringe, emitting a most noisome and sickening odour, and at the same time effectually staining and damaging the material. The ladies have not the slightest shadow of a doubt but that the umbrella carried by this man was the vehicle of the abominable filth. (6)

Immediately, certain interpretive possibilities present themselves. I am sure most of my readers are struck by the possibility of bawdy jokes about an ejaculating umbrella; twenty-first-century eyes will struggle to unsee the “disgusting semi-fluid,” “propelled [as if] from a syringe” out of the tip of the leering gent's loathsome umbrella. Is Mr Hatton using the umbrella as a euphemism? If so, is that not a rather odd way of masking a sexual assault in a national newspaper? Or is this a literal account of an unpleasant occurrence? If this is truly what happened, how can we determine whether the outraged Mr Hatton was aware of the sexual connotations that present themselves so easily to us? Our modern inexorable sexual reading of the sticky umbrella stems from two circumstances: the very real sexual menace posed by a stranger who rubs himself against women's skirts in a public place (nothing funny about that), and more than a hundred years of being conditioned to notice, and snigger at, elongated objects. Since the popularisation of Sigmund Freud's theories of dream interpretation, the umbrella has been repeatedly interpreted as an unconscious substitution for the male genitals. Freud specifically mentioned umbrellas in his 1916–17 publication of A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, along with trees, poles, firearms, pencils, nail files, etc. (Freud 154–55). It was perhaps this which led Katherine Mansfield to quip in 1917 of E. M. Forster's 1910 novel Howard's End that: “I can never be perfectly certain whether Helen was got with child by Leonard Bast or by his fatal forgotten umbrella. All things considered, I think it must have been the umbrella” (121). Mansfield's joke is on the umbrella as a phallic substitution. She equates Leonard's insecure grasp on middle-class respectability with a lack of sexual virility, while also casting aspersions on the probability of E. M. Forster's plot. But that is only half the joke. The other half of the joke is much older, that of the “fatal forgotten umbrella.” This refers back to a long tradition, as I shall show, of the unassuming umbrella as a catalyst, a plot engine with a will of its own which pitches its owner into social embarrassment, romantic entanglements or worse.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 475 - 492
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Appadurai, Arjun. “Introduction: Commodities and the politics of value.” The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Ed. Appadurai, Arjan. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986. 3–63.Google Scholar
“Are Umbrellas Public Property?” Punch 1 Dec. 1869: 213.Google Scholar
Beaujot, Ariel. Victorian Fashion Accessories. London: Berg, 2012.Google Scholar
Bereford, James. The Miseries of Human Life. Vol. 2. London: Bulmer, 1807.Google Scholar
Blackwell, Mark, ed. The Secret Life of Things. Bucknell Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 2008.Google Scholar
Bowen, John. “Dickens's Umbrellas.” Dickens's Style. Ed. Tyler, Daniel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2013. 26–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Bill. “Thing Theory.” Things. Ed. Brown, Bill. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2004. 1–16.Google Scholar
Chambers, Robert. The Book of Days: A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities. 2 vols. London: W. & R. Chambers, 1863.Google Scholar
Clifford, William Kingdon. Lectures and Essays. Ed. Stephen, Leslie and Pollock, Frederick. London: Macmillan, 1879.Google Scholar
“Coaches.” Penny Magazine 23 Aug. 1834: 321–22.Google Scholar
Dodd, George. “Umbrellas.” Household Words 13 Nov. 1852: 201–04.Google Scholar
The Female Tatler. Ed. Morgan, Fidelis. London: Everyman's Library, 1992.Google Scholar
Fiss, Laura Kasson. “Out With it, as the Subeditor Said to the Novel: Wellerisms and the Humor of Excerption.” Victorian Periodicals Review 50.1 (Spring 2017): 238–37.Google Scholar
Forster, E. M. Howard's End. London: Edward Arnold, 1973.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Parts I and II. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 15. Trans. Strachey, James, Freud, Anna, Strachey, Alix and Tyson, Alan. London: Hogarth, 1978.Google Scholar
Fyfe, Paul. “Technologies of Serendipity.” Victorian Periodicals Review 48.2 (Summer 2015): 261–66.Google Scholar
Hatton, G. S. “To the Editor of the Times.” Times 23 May 1850: 6.Google Scholar
Henkle, Roger B. Comedy and Culture, England 1820-1900. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980.Google Scholar
Hollingshead, John. “People's Umbrellas.” Household Words 8 May 1858: 496–98.Google Scholar
Hughes, Linda K. “ SIDEWAYS!: Navigating the Material(ity) of Print Culture.” Victorian Periodicals Review 47.1 (Spring 2014): 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, Stephen Leigh. “The Bachelor's Umbrella.” Cabinet May 1852: 148–53.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007.Google Scholar
Lautréamont, Comte de [Isidore Ducasse]. Les chants de Maldoror. Trans. Guy Wernham. New York: New Directions, 1965.Google Scholar
Lautréamont, Comte de [Isidore Ducasse]. Les chants de Maldoror. Web. Brussels: Primento Digital, 2012.Google Scholar
Leary, Patrick. “Googling the Victorians.” Journal of Victorian Culture 10.1 (2005): 72–86.Google Scholar
“The Lost Umbrella.” London Reader 31 March 1883: 517–25.Google Scholar
Lutz, Deborah. “‘The Dead Still Among Us’: Victorian Secular Relics, Hair Jewelry, and Death Culture.” Victorian Literature and Culture 39 (2011): 127–42.Google Scholar
Mansfield, Katherine. Journal of Katherine Mansfield. Ed. Murry, J. Middleton. London: Constable, 1954.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. Selected Writings. Ed. McLellan, David. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977.Google Scholar
Masterson, Margery. “Dangerous Detours: The Perils of Victorian Periodicals in the Digitised Age.” The Perils of Print Culture: Book, Print and Publishing History in Theory and Practice. Ed. McElligott, Jason and Patten, Eve. New Directions in Book History. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014. 134–49.Google Scholar
Metropolitan Grievances; Or, a Serio-Comic Glance at Minor Mischiefs in London and its Vicinity, Including a Few Which Extend to the Country. London: Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1812.Google Scholar
O‘Connor, Erin. Raw Material: Producing Pathology in Victorian Culture. Durham: Duke UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Oxenford, John. “His Umbrella.” All the Year Round 4 Dec. 1862: 13–18.Google Scholar
“The Philosophy of Umbrellas.” Chambers's Edinburgh Journal 13 Nov. 1841: 340–41.Google Scholar
“Railroads v. Coaches; or, Steam v. Steeds.” New Sporting Magazine Sept. 1838: 187–94.Google Scholar
Reynolds, G. W. M. The Mysteries of the Courts of London. Vol. 7. London: Published for Mr. Reynolds, by John Dicks, 1855.Google Scholar
Robinson, F.W. “Mr. Bird's Best Umbrella.” Belgravia Feb. 1884: 66–90.Google Scholar
Rodwell, G. Herbert. The Memoirs of an Umbrella. London: E. Mackenzie, 1845.Google Scholar
“Sam Bentley's Christmas.” Once a Week 22 Dec. 1860: 710–18.Google Scholar
Sangster, William. “Umbrellas and their History.” London: Effingham Wilson, 1855.Google Scholar
Stevenson, Robert Louis. “The Philosophy of Umbrellas.” Edinburgh University Magazine Feb. 1871: 46–48.Google Scholar
Sullivan, J. F. “A Misunderstood Weapon.” Ludgate June 1897: 167–72.Google Scholar
The Tour of Doctor Syntax Through London: or the Pleasures and Miseries of the Metropolis. 3rd ed. London: J. Jonston, 1820.Google Scholar
Trotter, David. “On the Nail: Functional Objects in Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders .” Literary Bric-à-Brac and the Victorians: From Commodities to Oddities. Ed. Shears, Jonathon and Harrison, Jen. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. 115–28.Google Scholar
Turner, Mark W. “Time, Periodicals, and Literary Studies.” Victorian Periodicals Review 39.4 (Winter 2006): 309–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“An Umbrella for Two.” London Reader 18 Oct. 1879: 596–98.Google Scholar
“Umbrellas.” Chambers's Edinburgh Journal. 30 March 1833: 65.Google Scholar
“Umbrellas.” Saturday Review of Politics, Science and Art 18 May 1872: 627–28.Google Scholar
“Umbrellas and Parasols.” Saturday Magazine 10 Sept. 1842: 100–01.Google Scholar
“The Umbrellometer.” Punch 6 June 1857: 230.Google Scholar
Vincent, David. I Hope I Don't Intrude: Privacy and its Dilemmas in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015.Google Scholar
Watkins, C. “Umbræology.” Penny Satirist 5 May 1838: 3–4.Google Scholar
“The Weather Insists on Exhibiting Itself.” Times 13 July 1882: 9.Google Scholar
“When Dante entered the first circle . . .” Times 12 Aug. 1864: 6.Google Scholar
Zupančič, Alenka. The Odd One In: On Comedy. Cambridge: The MIT P, 2008.Google Scholar