Alas, Poor Lady

By the time Rachel Ferguson wrote 'Alas, Poor Lady' in 1937 it was possible to look back with horror and disbelief at what had happened to the daughters of extravagantly large Victorian families, victims of ‘parental incompetence’, who did not manage, through ineptitude or plainness or bad luck, to catch a husband. This novel is in the Lytton Strachey tradition of furious anger with those who had gone before. There were thousands of women who had been condemned to become distressed gentlefolk, dependent for their livelihood (unless they had been fortunate enough to inherit wealth) to seek work as governesses and companions, often in families that did not treat them well. When they could not find work they were reduced to virtual penury. In the opening, 1936, chapter the question is asked: ‘But – how does it happen? How does it happen?’ The finger of blame in Alas, Poor Lady is cast less at the men (since the system favoured them in all respects why would they seek to change it?) but at the matriarch who is too lazy, too unthinking to want to change things for her numerous daughters. It is Mrs Scrimgeour in her large house in Kensington who is the real culprit, being selfish, evasive and lacking in any concern for her daughters beyond that of trying to make sure they fulfil society’s expectations of them. She fails to train them to be attractive to men or to find ways of occupying themselves; the most important thing, her daughters wearily accept, is that ‘a family of your own, one saw, saved your face’.