The Life and Work of Joan Riviere

Freud, Klein and Female Sexuality

Marion Bower

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429772566
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Human Sexuality in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The Life and Work of Joan Riviere traces her journey from dressmaker's apprentice, and member of the Society for Psychical Research, to Sigmund Freud's patient and his favourite translator. Marion Bower examines Riviere's important legacy and contribution to the early development of psychoanalysis.

Riviere was also a close friend and colleague of Melanie Klein and wrote her own highly original and influential papers on female sexuality and other topics, in particular Womanliness as a Masquerade (1929). Her position in the British Psychoanalytic Society was unusual as a direct link between Freud and Klein. Her own papers were extraordinarily prescient of developments in psychoanalysis, as well as the social climate of thetime. Riviere's experience as a dressmaker gave her an interest in female sexuality, and she proceeded to significantly challenge Freud's views. She also defended Klein from ferocious attacks by Melitta Schmideberg (Klein's daughter) and Anna Freud.

The Life and Work of Joan Riviere will appeal to anyone interested in the history of psychoanalysis as well as Riviere's highly original perspectives involving feminist thought and female sexuality.

Chapter 1

‘A well born lady’

She has a strong complex about being a well born lady.

Ernest Jones

As an adult, Riviere was seen as snobbish and upper-class, an impression emphasised by her height, magnificent carriage and stylish clothes. The reality was less elevated. Essentially her family were tradesmen who rose into the professional middle classes. Her father’s family had a long history in Sussex, originating in Lindfield in the thirteenth century. From the 1700s onwards there was a cluster of Verralls based in and around Lewes. There are a number of theories about the origins of the name, one suggested it was a corruption of Firle, a village not far from Lewes. Another theory was that the name was French in origin. Whichever is correct, the family was well-established in Lewes and had a strong tradition of public service in the town.

Lewes is built on a chalk promontory overlooking the River Ouse. There has been a town there since 900. By 1080 the Domesday Book records Lewes as a borough and liable to taxation. The taxes included a tax on porpoises, and, unlikely though this sounds, remains of porpoises have been found in the grounds of Lewes Priory. The streets of the town cluster tightly around the hill and give the impression of a town in the clouds. Approaching modern Lewes it is striking how close everything is. The High Street, the Bowling Green, the White Hart and Bull House are all a few minutes walk from each other. They are also important in the history of the Verralls. In the town’s seventeenth- and eighteenth-century heyday the High Street was lined by vintners, grocers, butchers, saddlers, gunsmiths, drapers, milliners and shoemakers (it remains the same today but without the saddlers and gunsmiths). Balls were held in the Assembly Rooms when the moon was full. There were a number of hostelries such as the White Hart, whose master was Richard Verrall (Davey, 1977). Richard and Sarah Verrall are the first ancestors of Hugh Verrall, Joan’s father, who can reliably be identified. Richard was a constable of Lewes in 1717, 1730 and 1735. The role of constable was a voluntary one, appointed yearly to keep law and order. Between 1686 and 1799, ten Verralls served as constable. This tradition of public service was continued by Hugh Verrall, and his father. One of his sisters was on the education board.

From 1733 the developing Lewes social scene was damaged by battles between Whigs and Tories. John Cripps, the landlord of The Star, was a Tory, and likewise John Lidgitter, who owned a coffee shop. To balance things out the Duke of Newcastle, the Whig godfather of Lewes, installed Richard Verall Junior in a coffee house for the Whigs. A later attempt by the Duke to establish a Whig Assembly Rooms was less successful, perhaps because of a lack of partners. The division was called off, and from 1740 onwards Whigs and Tories danced together. Richard Junior died young in 1742 and was succeeded by his brother Harry Verrall as proprietor of the Whig Coffee House. As we shall see, Harry had even more radical leanings and played a significant role in the genesis of Tom Paine’s Rights of Man. Harry was not an ancestor that Joan would claim with pride. She once famously remarked that socialism was the ‘religion of younger siblings’.

Lewes has a long tradition of independent thinking. In the sixteenth century, seventeen Protestant martyrs were burned at the stake during the reign of Queen Mary. They are still commemorated in modern Lewes when seventeen blazing crosses are carried round the town on bonfire night. In 1768 the Lewes townspeople elected two enlightened MPs: Thomas Hay and Thomas Hampden. Both voted against attempts to expel or imprison their fellow MP, John Wilkes, the champion of civil liberties. Wilkes visited Lewes in August 1770 and was given an enthusiastic welcome with thousands flocking to see him and church bells ringing. The author of The Rights of Man slipped into Lewes more quietly in 1768. Tom Paine had an unsettled life and he tried a number of different jobs, including that of corsets maker – not a very suitable job for someone who advocated freedom. Despite his beliefs he accepted a job with the excise at £50 a year. Paine soon found kindred spirits including Samuel Ollive, his landlord at Bull House. Ollive was a pillar of the dissenting chapel and a Senior High Constable. There was also a lively group of professional men who met at the White Hart and formed a debating club called ‘The Headstrong Club’. The most argumentative debater was awarded an old copy of Homer they called the ‘headstrong book’. Not surprisingly, the book was frequently awarded to Tom Paine. Paine married Ollive’s daughter, and Harry Verrall was a witness at their wedding.

Harry Verrall and Tom Paine were also both members of the bowls club. One day they were both relaxing over a bowl of punch and Harry remarked that ‘the King of Prussia was the best fellow in the world for a King, he had so much of the devil in him!’ This observation led Paine to reflect that ‘if it were necessary for a King to have so much of the devil in him, kings might very well be dispensed with!’ By 1774, Paine had moved on to France and America where his revolutionary thinking was more influential. The large undulating bowling green still exists. When I visited Lewes, bowls were still being played with special balls designed to cope with the ups and downs of the green. Modern Lewes leans to the right politically, but they are still proud of Paine. On a handsome board outside Bull House it proclaims Tom Paine ‘Writer and Revolutionary lived here’.

Edward Verrall, the second son of Richard and Sarah of the White Hart, struck out on his own and became a publisher and stationer. He was paid by the borough to print notices during outbreaks of smallpox in 1731. He was proprietor, publisher and editor of The Lewes Journal. This newspaper was distributed by newsmen who tramped the country laden with journals, spectacles, fiddle strings, elixirs and pamphlets. Like Amazon, Edward diversified. Edward and his wife had eight children. When he died he left instructions for his daughter Martha to be apprenticed to a milliner in Bond Street, London. This had echoes one hundred and fifty years later when Anna and Hugh Verrall arranged for Joan to be apprenticed to the fashionable dressmaker Mrs. Ida Nettleship on Wigmore Street in London. Richard and Sarah’s fifth child was William, who was probably the relative Joan was happiest to claim. He inherited the mastership of the White Hart from his father. However, he wrote a successful cookery book, A Complete System of Cookery. His book claims that he learned his recipes while working for the Duke of Newcastle under the great chef Clouet. His book was sold by his brother Edward and John Rivington in St Paul’s churchyard. There is a copy of this book, which belonged to the poet Thomas Grey, in the British Museum.

With Harry Verrall’s children the ascent of the Verralls into the professional middle classes begins. In 1781 William Verrall married Mary – and they had one child, Henry Verrall, born in 1783. Henry moved from Lewes to Steyning. Henry was the first professional member of the family. He was a solicitor who continued the family tradition of public service. He was secretary to the Bramber Agricultural Association, who presented him with a silver bowl in recognition of his services. Henry married Sarah Newmuns in 1812. Their eldest son, William, became a doctor and moved to Brighton, and their daughter, Mary, was unmarried and remained at home. The youngest child was Henry Verrall, Joan’s grandfather, who was a Brighton solicitor. In 1848 he married Anne Webb, daughter of John Webb Woolgar. Their children incorporated their mother’s surname, Woolgar, into their own, a tradition that Joan’s father and mother would also follow. Henry and Anne’s eldest child Henry died during infancy, a tragedy which was to repeat itself in the next generation. The oldest surviving child, Arthur Woolgar Verrall, was the star of the family. He was the first family member to go to Cambridge, where he was Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College and the first King Edward VII Professor of English Literature. He also found time to follow his father’s profession and was briefly a successful barrister at law. In 1882 he married Margaret de Gaudrion, daughter of Frederick Merrifield, a Brighton barrister. Margaret was a lecturer at Newnham College Cambridge. These two unusual people were to become an enormously important influence on Joan’s life.

The second son of Henry and Anne Verrall was Thomas Woolgar Verrall, who became a doctor. Finally, we get to Hugh John Verrall, Joan’s father, born in 1854. Like Arthur, he was sent to boarding school, in this case to Marlborough, which had a good reputation for turning out potential professional men. Hugh joined his father’s firm and became a solicitor. As well as being a solicitor, Hugh was also a clerk of the peace and Lieutenant Colonel of the First Volunteer Rifle Brigade, Sussex Regiment. In view of Hugh’s later ill-health this is a position it is hard to imagine him holding, but very much in the family tradition of public service. Hugh also had two sisters, Marian and Annette. Annette was a member of the Brighton School Board and Education Committee and later the East Sussex Education Committee. Before women got the vote this was one the few ways a woman could exercise civic power.

On 16th June 1881, Hugh Verrall married Anna Hodgson in the parish church of Chalgrave in Bedfordshire. The bride was a former governess and daughter of the vicar. The wedding was a source of excitement in the village and the church was packed with people. A detailed account appeared in the local paper. At eleven thirty the bride appeared leaning on the arm of her brother. She was attended by the two Misses Verrall and her sisters Marian, Edith, Daisy and Dora. Anna wore a handsome cream satin dress, trimmed with Duchesse lace, tulle and ribbon. The bridesmaids were dressed in pink zephyr and mob caps and carried baskets of ‘choice’ flowers. The service was read affectingly by the bride’s father. The wedding party was confined to near relations. Some economy was necessary as the Reverend and Mrs Hodgson had thirteen children, ten of them girls. After a wedding breakfast at the Vicarage the new Mr and Mrs Verrall set off on a tour of the Lakes.

At first it was a mystery to me how Anna and Hugh could have met. Chalgrave is a long way from Brighton. However, examination of the census records throws some light on this. In contrast to the Verralls, who were firmly rooted in Sussex, John Willoughby Hodgson, the Vicar of Chalgrave, had led a mobile existence. The 1841 Census shows him living at the Grammar School for Reigate, Surrey, his occupation given as a Schoolmaster. In 1851 he is visiting Kirkford Vicarage, Petworth in Sussex, aged 31, and he is now the Curate of Kirkford. In 1851 he married Julia Tosswill of Broadclyst, Devon, who was ten years his junior. In 1861 Julia and John Hodgson were living in Brighton and John Hodgson was a clergyman without care of souls. At this point Anna was four and the fourth of six children. The family had six servants including a cook, housemaids and nursemaids. It is likely that these servants were not only necessary for the family but also for a large household of boarders. By 1871 the Hodgsons had fourteen boarders. After the Hodgsons left the house it was occupied by Mr Seaver’s Boys School which gives some indication of its size. Perhaps it was snobbery about the boarders which created some of the tensions between the Hodgsons and the Verralls. This cannot have been insurmountable as, following the family tradition, Joan and her brother and sister were given their mother’s surname as a middle name.

Finally, on the 24th February 1875, John Hodgson became Vicar of Chalgrave and made up for his wandering years by staying put as Vicar for twenty-three years and sixty-six days. The family further consolidated their social position by sending two of their sons to Cambridge. The Reverend Hodgson’s salary was £250 per year, so it was likely he continued to take in boarders to keep his large family. For Anna, now in her early twenties, the move must have felt like an exile from the sparkling life of Brighton. Chalgrave remains a remote and scattered parish and the church is at the end of a long and isolated lane. Something of the flavour of life comes from the parish vestry book. The same four or five men met with the Vicar to decide on the parish rate and allocate parish roles. In one particularly poignant entry, John Hodgson wrote that ‘no-one came, so no parish business could be transacted’. The only exciting event seems to have been the Sunday School picnic.

It was probably to get away from this stultifying life that Anna decided to become a governess. In some ways her situation was more fortunate than that of many governesses. Her father was still alive and able to support her (Hughes, K., 1993). By the standards of the time she had received a good education from her father, and had probably helped out in the Sunday School at Chalgrave. She was familiar, perhaps too familiar, with the needs and demands of small children. Best of all, she had contacts. The years in Brighton and the Reverend Hodgson’s work had given them a wide acquaintance. During the 1850s the supply of women wishing to be governesses exceeded the places available. It was a buyer’s market, and women could be put through humiliating steps to get a place. The Governesses Benevolent Institution ran an employment agency, but that was based in London. Many women were forced to advertise their services in newspapers. The ideal way of getting a place was through friends and people you knew. (This is the scene in Jane Austen’s Emma when the odious Mrs Elton suggests a place for Jane Fairfax.)

It is quite likely that Anna already knew Hugh Verrall because of the Brighton connection. If Anna did work for a family in Malta, as the family story goes, it was a sensible move. Governesses occupied an uncomfortable middle ground between the family and the servants and were often paid less than senior servants. Families from abroad appreciated their English governess, and the loss of social status was less painful. Did Hugh and Anna write while Anna was away? It would have been natural for Anna to return to Brighton where she had friends and contacts if she wanted a post in England again. Alternatively, Hugh could have proposed by letter, in which case Anna would have returned to her family in Chalgrave. Anna’s experiences as a governess seem to have given her confidence and a willingness to try new things. When she wanted to see Queen Victoria’s funeral she travelled up to London on her own. She took up archery and learned to ride a bicycle. It is a very different picture to the fussy housewife that her granddaughter Diana paints. Anna’s experiences cast another light on the Verralls’ decision to send Joan to Gotha for a year when she was seventeen. They must have hoped that year abroad would give her confidence, and unlike Anna, she would not have had to look after children!

Although Joan would probably have preferred to be compared to her father, as she got older she showed her mother’s willingness to launch herself into new experiences, her analysis with Ernest Jones (although as we shall see, psychoanalysis as a theory was not unknown to her), her journey to Vienna to be analysed by Freud, and her intellectual daring in taking up the new ideas of Melanie Klein.

Chapter 2

Joan

After the honeymoon, Anna and Hugh returned to Brighton and moved in with Hugh’s parents, Henry and Anne at 26 Gloucester Place. There was plenty of room in the tall, thin house, although Hugh’s two sisters continued to live there. Living with Hugh’s parents cannot have been easy for Anna. She was a wife, but with no home of her own to run. Anne Verrall rustled up and downstairs giving orders to the cook and the housemaids. Annette and Marion, Hugh’s sisters, both had their own public concerns to attend to. Neither became particularly friendly with Anna. Anna probably joined Mrs Verrall on her round of social calls. Hugh and Mr Verrall shared a solicitors’ practice at 4 New Road. The office has now been knocked through to make a cafe; but even then it must have been a lively location, near the Pavilion and a short walk from Gloucester Place. Hugh had a successful career until he was hampered later by the debility caused by rheumatic fever. He does not seem to have had the drive of his 2 older brothers. Arthur was a barrister and lecturer at Trinity College. Thomas held senior posts in the medical profession. Like Thomas, he went to Marlborough School, which had the reputation of turning out boys who became successful members of the professions. Anna seems to have been a more vigorous personality, and maybe this was part of her attraction for Hugh.

Before long, Anna was pregnant. In the days before pregnancy tests many women were not aware of being pregnant until the baby started to move. As the middle child of a large family Anna was familiar with the early signs. She immediately became the focus of discreet attention, this would be the first grandchild for the Verralls. The Verralls enjoyed providing for their grandchildren, so it is possible that they bought the cradle for the new baby. A monthly nurse was engaged. The nurse arrived a month before the baby was due and stayed until the baby was three months old. She looked after mother and baby, cleaning the mother’s room, washing the baby’s clothes and caring for the baby. If the baby was bottle-fed the nurse would feed it; if it was breast-fed the nurse would bring it in. The whole purpose of her work was to ensure that mothers rested during the lying in period, ‘the monthly nurse should be a dragon of watchfulness keeping away small bothers which men cannot refrain from bringing to their wives’ (Flanders, 2003) Good monthly nurses were tremendously in demand, and Anne Verrall may have had a hand in engaging one.

Despite the excitement there would have been anxiety. Maternal mortality was still very high. By 1899, sixteen percent of children did not survive until their first birthday. Perhaps, not surprisingly, pregnancy began to be medicalised. The middle classes used a doctor rather than a midwife. Rest and seclusion was the extent of Victorian antenatal care, so it is unlikely that Anna would have travelled to see her parents. Her one liberation would have been to leave off her corsets as the baby grew. John and Julia Hodgson probably came to visit Anna, perhaps with some of the ‘little aunts’ as Anna called them. This visit would have generated complex social ripples. Julia would have been longing to give helpful advice to Anna, but the evidence of Anna’s diary suggests that there were tensions between Anna and her mother. Anna’s long period as a governess may have been partly a way of leaving home. The tensions between Anna and Julia were mirrored later when Joan became a mother.

The Verralls viewed the Hodgsons as socially inferior, which led to difficulties when Hugh and Anna chose Joan’s names. The Verralls were financially better off, and a clergyman who took in boarders would have been considered inferior to a successful professional man. Ironically, it was Joan’s birth and Hugh’s temporary desertion which drove Anna back into the arms of her family. However, when the first baby was born, Anna was firmly embedded among the Verralls. The doctor was called, and Anna may have been offered chloroform. In 1857 Queen Victoria had chloroform during childbirth. However it was slow to gain popularity and Charles Darwin administered it to his wife Emma himself. At first there was excitement, the baby was a boy. He was put into...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Prologue
• Chapter 1 ‘A well born lady’
• Chapter 2 Joan
• Chapter 3 Other worlds
• Chapter 4 Education
• Chapter 5 Apprenticeship and marriage
• Chapter 6 Does housekeeping interest you at all?
• Chapter 7 ‘Nerves’
• Chapter 8 Ernest Jones
• Chapter 9 Freud
• Chapter 10 A devilish amount of trouble
• Chapter 11 I would be inclined to bet heavily on her
• Chapter 12 Child wars
• Chapter 13 Female sexuality and femininity
• Chapter 14 The road to war
• Chapter 15 A front-rank analyst
• Chapter 16 War
• Chapter 17 After the war
• Chapter 18 The internal world
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index