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The Angel Isafrel: A Story of Prohibition in New Zealand
Isafrel: Angel of the Home, or New Woman?
Isafrel: Angel of the Home, or New Woman?
In spite of her fanaticism, Isafrel is in many ways an archetypal angel of the home, the Victorian ideal of feminine purity, self-sacrifice and religious piety firmly ensconced in the domestic sphere. She is universally adored by everyone she meets - George remarks on the “dirty little urchin” (Reed 21)59 that kisses the hem of her dress, and Isafrel herself casually mentions her interactions with half a dozen different religious organisations, that we are told “all looked on Isafrel as belonging to themselves,” (Reed 20)60. Isafrel’s friendship with the Chinese man, John, and the urchin, were significant enough to raise a skeptical comment in the Observer’s review: “Such a reverential urchin and so soft-hearted a Chinaman we fear are rather scarce in the land.” (Observer 28 October 1896)61. George explains away this phenomenon to Isafrel: it is your own goodness, darling, that you see reflected in everybody you meet, and they're all good because they can't be anything else when you're with them. (Reed 22)62.
Isafrel’s powerful influence is reinforced by her role within the family; she tells Dr Wilmott that when her father is drunk “he is kind to me; and when in his greatest frenzies, for sometimes he is so wild to others, I lay my hand on his arm and look in his eyes and say ‘father,’ he is as quiet as a lamb,” (Reed 37)63. Her brothers and sisters look to her for comfort, and when even her mother flees for safety, Isafrel tries to intervene in her father’s drunken madness. When Isafrel appears at the National Convention, having humbly tried to shrink from taking a part in the proceedings, her youth and purity are emphasised - her appearance on the stage is as “one graceful willowy girl, clad in white,” (Reed 43)64. It is her religious piety that transfigures her; “That slight, lissome, girlish figure appeared to assume an aspect of majesty. Her face beamed with fervour,” (Reed 45)65 as she speaks out against the demon drink, compared with the “great quietness... almost in a monotone, the softened cadences and measured words” (Reed 45)66 with which she had initially addressed the crowd. Isafrel’s femininity, her youth and purity and piety are emphasised, drawing on the archetype of the angel in the home to establish her goodness.
But in spite of these very feminine traits and characterizations, Isafrel is also an extremely empowered young woman, drawing on the emerging image of the new woman. She was young, middle-class, and single (on principle).... She exhibited emancipated behaviors such as smoking, riding a bicycle, and taking the bus or train unescorted. She belonged to all-female clubs and societies where the talk was of ideas, and she sought freedom and equality with men. (T. Collins 310)67.
Isafrel also fulfills a majority of these characteristics in her heavily political engagement with the world. While she does not smoke, she does ride a bicycle on her unescorted visit to Dr Wilmott; while she technically does not belong to any of the charitable organisations, she is still “the life and soul of the whole movement,” (Reed 42)68. Her athletic fitness is evident from the first chapter, in which she not only rows the boat with George, but “putting her foot on the gunwale, she sprang into the water in the direction of the drowning girl” (Reed 9)69. Isafrel is not only fit, but educated, being “well acquainted with the methods of the Humane Society for restoring the drowned” (Reed 10)70. Perhaps the most incredible feat for the young, angelic girl, is the justification for her claim, “I am as strong as a horse. You don't know that I knocked a man down the other day.” (Reed 24)71. In the defence of a mother from her drunken husband, Isafrel not only comes between them when he attempts to hit his wife, but claims:I sprang at him and seized him by the wrist, and, oh! I felt as strong as a lion, and I gave such a wrench to his arm, and with my other hand I wrested the tomahawk out of his hand, and I flung him from me, and he fell in a heap to the floor. “You ruffian,” I cried, “how dare you lift your hand to the woman that you swore to love?” He picked himself up and looked me in the face. I had still the tomahawk in my hand. (Reed 24)72.
How do we reconcile this sensationalised image of an axe-wielding defender of the down trodden with ““That slight, lissome, girlish figure” (Reed 45)73 at the National Council of Women? Is Isafrel an angelic paragon of Victorian virtue, or an athletic and politically empowered New Woman?
While the angel of the home and the New Woman were “socially polarized archetypes” (Norcia 347)74 as a traditional virtue against modern liberalism, this did not prevent them being united in one character. In Four On An Island, L.T. Meade creates Isabel, a heroine who “realizes her Adventurous Angel possibilities by combining her domestic Angel skills with her adventurous impulses.... power comes from her association with both the adventurous and the domestic realms.” (Norcia 353)75. Similarly, Isafrel’s political influence comes from the virtues that make her an angel in the home: her compassion, her kindness, her self-sacrifice. Slightly less radically, the WCTU pursued a line of argument that attempted to legitimize their political activities by enlarging the domestic sphere that was woman’s domain; “the WCTU attempted to expand the sphere of home and family by claiming the world with the labels of sisterhood, brotherhood and maternity.” (Dalton 17)76. In The Angel Isafrel, the heroine’s involvement is similarly justified, because alcohol “is so clearly the enemy of home, which is woman's world” (Reed 52)77. In fact, Isafrel’s conviction is so sure, that when one woman “made the idiotic remark that ‘woman's proper place was home,’ and that for herself she never mixed up in politics,” (Reed 38)78 Isafrel confesses to a strong desire to swear. The combination of her virtuous refusal to swear with her sincere desire to do so help keep Isafrel engaging, much as her charity work is revealed to have led her into a physical confrontation with an axe. The unexpectedly forceful side of her character builds an interesting dynamic with her feminine virtue. When she is confined to a sick bed for the second half of the novel, her charismatic presence is greatly reduced, as Reed seems to have lost interest in his rather remarkable heroine in favour of political reforms; nevertheless, Dr Wilmott finds that ““he thought that a bicycle was the prettiest and most graceful vehicle he had ever seen to carry a lady.” (Reed 41)79 - reclaiming the stereotyped image of a “New Woman” as a fetchingly feminine means of conveyance, symbolic of the amalgamation in Isafrel of those two “socially polarized archetypes” (Norcia 347)80.