In the Year of Jubilee (1894) is the first in this series. You may click the link, or the graphic to access the interactive learning object. The full text transcript appears below. You may access the full text of the book at Project Gutenberg. There is an audio recording of In the Year of Jubilee at Librivox.org.
 |
| George Gissing: In the Year of Jubilee (1894) |
TEXT TRANSCRIPT: In the Year of
Jubilee (1894) by George Gissing
Mini-Lecture by Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D.
Introduction
In the
Year of Jubilee (1895) is, as other novels by George Gissing,
extremely sympathetic toward women. It takes place in the late Victorian world
where there is more access and communication with far flung regions, and where
the British Empire has enriched the nation.
However, Gissing's is also a complex word where one step outside
the norms results in a loss of marriage prospects, a loss of inheritance, loss
of social standing, and the potential for disease and literal starvation.
About "Jubilee"
Jubilee refers to the 50th
anniversary of Queen Victoria’s reign, and also to the biblical concept of
“Jubilee” a year in which property reverts to its proper owner.
Gissing’s novel starts
with the Jubilee celebrations, which usher in disruptions.
The old order is turned
upside down, and new enterprises are built upon false appearances, short cuts,
and vanity. They replace what came
before.
Nancy
Lord: Trapped in a Social Caste System and Gender
At the center of the
narrative is Nancy Lord, the daughter of a successful piano dealer. She has
been raised to a higher level than what might be expected, with the idea that
education ushers in social mobility. Thus, she aims higher than previous
generations may have dared to do, given that her father was in
"trade," and not a gentleman (by Victorian standards).
Despite the fact that her
father is in trade, Nancy's mother, who abandoned the family when Nancy was a
toddler, was in fact, born of gentry. The mother, however, displays little
innate nobility is a shallow woman who it seems will do anything to live in
luxury.
Nancy’s mother rather
hypocritically condemns the sisters, Fanny and Beatrice French, daughters of a
wealthy builder, and their lives in a large home in a new suburb of
London.
Fraud and skill fakery are
keys to success in this new world where mass production, advertising,
distribution, and credit make it possible for women and men to achieve the
appearance of the upward mobility as they do what they can to actually achieve
higher places in society.
Jubilee: Restoration with Resignation
The restoration of money
to rightful owners takes a long, convoluted path in the narrative of the novel,
which includes attempts to hide Nancy’s marriage (and baby) in order to avoid
losing her inheritance, and the ultimate unmasking of unsavory business
practices on the part of spiteful, vindictive members of the sisters French.
At the same time, the
energetic and entrepreneurial-spirited self-invented Luckworth Crewe, achieves
wealth in the newly emerging business of advertising and public relations.
Apocalypse and the Jubilee
Jubilee is, at its heart,
deeply apocalyptic, because it suggests a new order, or at least a return to
natural distribution and order. Apocalypse is a theme that is a theme that
occurs throughout Gissing’s work. Change refers the destruction of the old and
a replacement of the new.
The purpose is to either
rid oneself of old inequities or to create a vibrant world of technology
(trains, telegraph, newspapers, gas lights).
At the same time, however,
the world to be replaced already contains the consequences of change, including
poisonous, lung-searing fog, dark, crowded urban landscapes, and hunger, both
physical and psychological.
Women and Education: New Access, but to what end?
Gissing rails against the
useless schooling that is bandied about as women’s “education” and the
socially-encouraged destructive in-fighting, competition, dependence on others,
enslavement in marriage, and lack of self-determination.
Gissing also suggests that
when a friend of Nancy who works as a governess, Jessica suffers a nervous
breakdown as she tried to pass an exam in order to matriculate at London
University.
As Gissing depicts the
situation, Jessica does not collapse because she is intellectually incapable,
but because it is too difficult to work full-time as a governess and try to
study all night (instead of eating and sleeping).
Further, Jessica must
combat the ridicule and negativity of the men who scoff at her goals.
Summary
George Gissing’s late
Victorian naturalistic novel, In the Year of Jubilee (1894) concerns
itself with both people and property, and how both are both lost and gained in
both material and metaphorical senses.
Using people and property
as a point of departure, the novel also addresses change in society: the
changing roles of women, the impact of technological and commercial
innovations, and about education’s form and impact in late Victorian times.
