Signification, common knowledge, and womanhood: The significs of Lady Victoria Welby and beyond

Abstract

Lady Victoria Welby was born to an era when women were challenging their station as summarily subject to the discretion of the dominant male proprietors. The furtive soil of women's liberation had been enriched by the quill and fountain of epic female figures such as Abigail Adams (1744–1818, First Lady of the United States of America between, 1797–1801, promoted property rights for women), Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797 – Vindication on the Rights of Women, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters), and Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935 – The Home: Its Work and Influence). The Victorian period witnessed the burgeoning of a female authority in public consciousness with vigorous support from public figures such as John Stewart Mill (1806–1873 – The Subjection of Women), who openly rejected inequality between sexes, and John Ruskin (1819–1900), who urged women to “abandon trivial feminine pursuits in order to act as a moral force in countering the ills of society” (Ruskin, Of Queen's Gardens, Sesame and Lillie, 1865). It is, therefore, not astonishing that Lady Victoria Welby's authority among semioticians emerged from her endeavours interpreting scriptures. Moral gatekeeping was fast becoming a female authority widely respected, though most prominently within the confines of the private sphere. Women were socially groomed to manage the family's moral code, shape children's character, and nurture the husband's honorable conduct (Meyrowitz 1985: 200). However, respect for women's particular authority and power within the private sphere was limited and remained ancillary to the dominance of the masculine paradigm. Though common sensibility has changed toward women's mobility within the public sphere, the socio-operative dynamics of power between genders remains asymmetrical, the scale tipped decidedly in favour of the masculine domain. Given that the social world operates to a significant degree within the ambit of symbolic elocutions, there has never been a better moment in history to apply Lady Victoria Welby's theory of significs to examine the contemporary subordination of women, and Susan Petrilli's publication of Welby's correspondence is nothing short of timely.