Trouble with Helen: The Gladstone Family Crisis, 1846– 1848

Abstract

AbstractThe life of Helen Gladstone (1814–80), younger sister of William Ewart Gladstone, the pre‐eminent statesman of nineteenth‐century Britain, was an unhappy series of rebellions against a Victorian patriarchy that sought to manage her aberrant behaviour by grinding her into submission. Of her life's many low points, the period in her early thirties was perhaps the most profoundly shocking. Unrequited in love, lacking any useful occupation, and alienated from her favourite brother, William, by her conversion to Roman Catholicism, she was depressed and drug‐dependent. Yet, even in despair, she demonstrated a defiance that threatened to turn a private drama into public shame. The way that her brothers and father tried to control her, both physically and mentally, highlights the predicament of many independent yet redundant women in upper‐class Victorian society. In William Gladstone, in particular, Helen brought out a bullying streak unparalleled in his relationships with other people; perhaps he recognized, in her behaviour, the darker side of his own nature and the possible consequences if it were not kept under strict control.