Written as companion piece to journalistic essay, "The Young
Women at the Telegraph Office", published 1877 (June),
Good Words
Published 1877 (December), Good Cheer, Christmas Number of
Good Words
Published in a book 1882 (December), Why Frau Frohmann Raised Her
Prices; and Other Stories, Wm Isbister
To Trollope-l
April 21, 1998
Re: Short Story: "The Telegraph Girl"(I)
I liked this story very much. It examines a new lifestyle that was emerging for women--and also men--at the end of the 19th century. It is a life in which one is not supported and surrounded by one's family members, in which one's network may include family and friends, but also includes people one happens to meet on the job and who through circumstances one comes to live with and bond with.
Trollope suggests this life offers great freedom for individuals and can enable them to find happiness through anonymous contacts that would not be available to them before: thus when the story closes Lucy has before her a happy future because she has been able to meet, get to know, and fall in love with a man her family and friends know nothing of. Austen's heroines had a very limited stock of males they could meet--now both Lucy and Sophy can go outside the narrow circle of who they happen to live near and who their families will accept.
Trollope also suggests the life of the working girl offers self-respect and freedom for her in a daily sort of way. Lucy has to live on a small income, but it is hers. Trollope makes the point that when she finishes work, her time is her own, and he makes it early and presents it as an emphatic reason for Lucy's decision not to settle herself either with her sister-in-law or another family or in service:
"To be a servant was distasteful to her, not through any idea tha service was disreputable, but from a dislike to be subject at all hours to the will of others. To work and work hard she was quite willing, so that there might be some hours of her life in which she might not be called upon to obey" (Sutherland, Early Short Stories, p 355).
I remember my mother-in-law comparing her life as an upper servant in the middle 1920's to her life as an employee of Woolworth's in the 1930's. She said of the first it was like a perpetual imprisonment; she was under surveyance from the time she got up in the morning to the time she went to sleep. She was not only never alone, she was given work to do until she slept. The money she was given was very small since she was given her food and lodgings. Her family thought it a come-down when she quit her job as a lower governess because she was an "upper servant" to work in Woolworth's. But it was a great release. She had to work 5 1/2 days a week; she worked from 9 to 8. But when she went home her time was her own. She made enough money to choose her own food. Sundays were all hers.
Ellen Moody
Re: Short Story: "The Telegraph Girl" (II)
Trollope is practical. He always sees everything in terms of the hard realities of life--especially in terms of money. He opens the story with the comment that Lucy has three shillings a day with which "to cover all the expenses of life, food, raiment, shelter, a room in which to eat and sleep, and fire and light,--and recreation if recreation there might be" (Sutherland, Early Short Stories, p 254). He says it is very little, but Lucy finds she can manage.
The story is also a realistic and at times powerful story about the economic and social pressures which drove the existence of one Lucy Graham who worked for the Telegraph Office for what appears to be 6 days a week of 8 hour a day work (you ate your dinner while there, but then the goverment provided said dinner) for the grand total of 18 shillings a week. In the notes at the back of Sutherland's edition of Later Short Stories we find that this story was the fictional accompaniment of a non-fictional essay by Trollope on the conditions of work, and Trollope praises these as decent (although he does not say it I would suggest civil servants are usually not as ground down as private employees--no-one seeking to wring a profit out of them).
The non-fiction journalistic piece described a trip Trollope took and what he observed at the Post Office's telegraphy center at St.Martin's-le-Grand. As Sutherland writes, Trollope also "perceives above all a decent occupation and a way out of the seamstress-governess-prostitute trap, as the only kinds of independence previously available to young Victorian women:
'Eight hundred young women at work, all in one room, all looking comfortable, most of them looking pretty, earning fair wages at easy work,--work fit for women to do, work at which they can sit and rest and not be weary, with a kitchen at and and hot dinner in the middle of the day, with leave of absence without stoppage of pay every year, with a doctor for sickness, and a pension for old age and incompetence, for the young women as years roll on will become old,--with only eight hours of work, never before eight in the morning and never after eight at night, with female superintendents and the chance of rising to be a superintendent open to each girl! Is not that the kind of institution that philanthropic friends of the weaker sex have been looking for and desiring for years?"
But as ever there is another aspect to this story. Lucy's three shillings a day only go so far, and her existence is monotonous, cut off from people she can really care about, and precarious. I find the examination of her relationship with Sophia Wilson very perceptive. Those whom earlier novels would define as strong and good become the weak and the unvalued by those they are dependent upon or need in this story.
To review the story from this light: while Sophia is again and again (by Lucy herself as well as others) said to be the weak person, the one whe gets sick, the one who is tempted to spend too much money, the one (the narrator says) who does not have "strength of mind to do what is distasteful to her," when she is united with the moral and kindly Lucy her weakness becomes a kind of strength and she preys on Lucy. Lucy begins to support her with her money; Lucy will not give in to her desire to break entirely from old ways and go out with strange young men to the theatre, and thus cuts herself off from really finding new relationships when the family is gone. Ironically it is in fact Sophia who brings Lucy to the attention of Abraham Hall. We are led to wonder how the kind of loyalty and unwillingness to trust to the anonymous, the chastity and integrity of a Lucy will fare in the modern world. After all once it is seen that Sophia hears more keenly, Sophia is promoted. Promotion does not depend upon your value as an individual, but how much you fit into a machine, how good a cog you are, how much profit you can make for someone else.
We are shown that given Lucy's character, the only way she can find personal fulfillment or happiness is to marry, and Trollope is very clear in this story (as he is elsewhere) that no-one should marry unless they love the individual they are going to marry. She is in fact very lucky to meet an upright decent young man who values her, who sees her sacrifices and discerns in her the kind of woman he wants to spend his life with, the kind of woman who would make a good mother to his boy.
So in this story in which Trollope shows us there is a new and perhaps better way for girls to support themselves than entering into families or service (or governessing, and certainly prostitution), he also suggests that still and all happiness lies in the bonds of deep love and friendship that can only be found in permanent relationships not based on how much money you are worth to someone else, but what your character is.
Being Trollope, he does not dismiss money, but note he does not despise four pounds a week nor a workman for that matter. The values here are really those of TWWLN. Real work which produces something which is to be used or which serves something useful is respected. A small modest life is presented as good. I found the love scene at the end very moving. How tactful Abraham Hall is. He is a gentleman in his soul and Lucy a lady. He seems to know just what she needs to hear: "I ask you... because with all my heart I love you" (p 381). And it's not a matter of simply obeying the stereotypical cant of respectability. Abraham Hall is correct to chide Lucy for her refusal to take help because even though she knows she needs the money and it is given to her by a good man trying to help her, or her bethrothed, somehow this may be seen as sexually compromising. This, says he, is false pride and false ways of thinking. The inner realities are what count.
And at the end we have no doubt that the Christmas style ending has truth: we have no doubt Lucy "became as good a wife as ever blessed a man's household" and he as good a husband as ever blessed a wife. The rhythms remind me of the close of A Christmas Carol.
Finally, we do not forget Sophy. While it's true we could not really care less about Sophy and her hairdresser, we are reassured she regained her health and nabbed him (which to be sure we never doubted). In a quiet way this also reinforces the double perspective we have on work and the "new lifestyle" and "home" and the old: Miss Wilson would say she was only doing what she had to, who can live on 3 shillings a day for the rest of one's life, she needed a man if she was to have any security or a comfortable income. Recreation counts.
Ellen Moody
Re: Short Story: "The Telegraph Girl" (III)
This week's story is another one written for Christmas, first published in Good Cheer as part of the Christmas number of Good Works in Decmeber 1877.
It is not usually included in the Christmas story volumes made up either of stories by Trollope or Trollope and other Victorians because of course it does not center on Christmas festivities; in fact, it doesn't mention Christmas at all. . I would suggest that Trollope's argument that Christmas stories ought to "to instil others with a desire for Christmas religious thought or Christmas festivities,--,better yet, with Christmas charity" (An Autobiography) may be found here in the usual polemical manner of Trollope.
As with "A Widow's Mite" where what is the nature of charity and how the individual who gives charity is rewarded, we have here a story which debates what is charity. I suppose on this level, the story is simple: Lucy goes too far, and we are led to see how such a spirit of sacrifice can be exploited, and Abraham Hall behaves justly. We also see how charity if often the result of wanting to bond oneself with someone (Lucy to Sophia who curiously she also recognizes is worthless and herself despises in part) and of wanting to express love (Abraham to Lucy).
Its upsweep may be attributed to its genre. This happy ending is not coy or strained--as I think "Kirby Cottage" is. Lucy marries a good kind intelligent and genuinely decent man who has been a real and loyal friend to her thoughout the story. They are neither of them children; they are not characterized as silly. Their acts are what we judge them on.
Statements like Abraham's "vehement" comment to Lucy that "I'd' marry you in a sack from the poor-house" are part of this generic feel. From Glendinning's biography we learn that Trollope married down when he married Rose and wonder how far his strong assertion of both Hall and Lucy's worth comes from his memories of his early years with Rose.
The word "blessed" is in the final passage.
Ellen
To Trollope-
September 27, 1998
Re: Women's Work: Anthony Trollope's "The Telegraph Girl"
While Trollope's short story called "The Telegraph Girl" is not literally about a shopgirl, he offers a realistic and at times powerful story about the economic and social pressures which drove the existence of one Lucy Graham who worked for the Telegraph Office for what appears to be 6 days a week of 8 hour a day work (you ate your dinner while there, but then the goverment provided said dinner) for the grand total of 18 shillings a week. As Trollope points out Lucy was independent once the hours were over, and in the edition of Trollope's _Later Short Stories_ by Sutherland we learn in the notes that the conditions of work for telegraph girls were pretty good (civil servants are usually not as ground down as private employees--no-one seeking to wring a profit out of them and all that).
Trollope also wrote an article in "Good Words," a non-fiction journalistic piece describing a trip he took and what he observed at the Post Office's telegraphy center at St.Martin's-le-Grand. As Sutherland writes, Trollope "perceives above all a decent occupation and a way out of the seamstress-governess-prostitute trap, as the only kinds of independence previously available to young Victorian women:
'Eight hundred young women at work, all in one room, all looking comfortable, most of them looking pretty, earning fair wages at easy work,--work fit for women to do, work at which they can sit and rest and not be weary, with a kitchen at and and hot dinner in the middle of the day, with leave of absence without stoppage of pay every year, with a doctor for sickness, and a pension for old age and incompetence, for the young women as years roll on will become old,--with only eight hours of work, never before eight in the morning and never after eight at night, with female superintendents and the chance of rising to be a superintendent open to each girl! Is not that the kind of institution that philanthropic friends of the weaker sex have been looking for and desiring for years?"
His piece may be found reprinted in MIchael Mason, ed, Anthony Trollope: Miscellaneous Essays and Reviews, New York 1981.
We still have very few, if any institutions whose bosses (or leaders if the polite word is required) think it at all part of their provence to look out for the welfare of their employees as vigorously as they keep on eye on their own salaries, the shareholders' dividends, and the given institution's or company's image. It's also possible we have gone backwards of late. One reads of women down in the mines, women working hard and dangerous jobs requiring great bodily strength in factories in the newspapers because in such terrible jobs they threaten the males whose jobs they may take at a lesser wage and are thus subject to sexual harrassment. No female superintendent here. And nowadays the hope of pensions, of health care, of a single daily secure job, are fast vanishing for men and women alike throughout this USA.
"The Telegraph Girl" was written as a Christmas story. It is not usually included in the Christmas story volumes made up either of stories by Trollope or Trollope and other Victorians. But it was first published in Good Cheer as part of the Christmas number of _Good Works_ in Decmeber 1877. It does have a happy ending. Lucy marries a good kind intelligent and genuinely decent man who has been a real and loyal friend to her thoughout the story when at its end he gets a "rise" to either 4 or 6 pounds week in his job and I think goes into business in a small way for himself. He has a child whom she becomes mother to. His last statement in this story is "I'd' marry you in a sack from the poor-house, if it were necessary, he said with vehemence (poor Lucy has come upon hard times, mostly because she's been screwed for the little she was worth by the young voracious unscruplous woman Sophie Wilson whom Lucy was sharing her flat with--Lucy cannot afford a flat on her own). The concluding lines of the story assure us Lucy became as happy as we are capable of imagining. The word "blessed" is in the final passage. Yet that Lucy will work as hard in the home as she did in the office is assumed, and that her work will be as valued is also assumed.
It is, though, a "Christmas" story here, and the woman [a Miss Wilson, Lucy's "friend"] who had been using her vulnerabilty, taking her wages, living off her, we are also told "recovered her health" and managed to nab a hairdresser. Here's the final line: "That Miss Wilson recovered her health and married the hairdresser may be accepted by all anxious readers as an undoubted fact." This ending has a curious ironic cheerfulness. We are supposed to say of this survivor and predator, Miss Wilson, I'll bet she did, but we are also to be aware that she needed to nab a man if she was to have any firm security. That too is often basically still true today.
Ellen Moody
I answered a query for material on London Office Workers and Office Buildings in the 19th century on Victoria as follows:
July 21, 2000
To Paula Marber,
Anthony Trollope's short story, 'The Telegraph Girl' and an article he wrote for Good Words, 'The Young Women at the Telegraph Office' would be useful to you. Both contain explicit detailed descriptions of the actual daily routine, physical compound, salaries, pensions schemes, provisions for meals, and some of the ways in which people behaved to one another in places where large groups of of young women were brought together to work ('Eight hundred young women at work, all in one room') in London offices around 1877 (the year these pieces were published).
The story may be found in John Sutherland's edition of Trollope's Later Short Stories (an Oxford paperback); the article has been reprinted in Michael Mason's compilation, Anthony Trollope: Miscellaneous Essays and Reviews (an Arno Press book).
Cheers,
Ellen Moody (who is grateful she does not have to in a room with 800 other
women, no matter how big it was)
Ellen2@JimandEllen.org
It was further answered thus:
Paula,
The Girl's Own Paper has a number of articles on this subject, and there are often replies to correspondents who have enquired about training for this type of work. The articles often have useful factual information re salaries, hours, employers' expectations, etc. As well, the tone is quite interesting. In the earlier issues in particular, there is quite a great deal of anxiety to assure girls that this work is not unwomanly.
Here are a few sample citations:
"Female Clerkships in the Post Office" vol. 4 no. 186 (21 July 1883): 663.
"Clerkships" vol. 5 no. 248 (27 Sept. 1884): 823.
"The Type-writer and Type-writing" Vol. 9 no. 451 (18 Aug. 1888): 745-746. [this is more about the technology]
4th prize essay in the "How I Earn My Living" competition for professional girls vol. 18 no. 896 (27 Feb. 1897): 414-415. [the author works for a publisher]
There are many more articles, but as this has not been my main focus, I've been rather haphazard in my collecting. The individual papers were gathered into annuals, and these usually have indices, if you wish to make a more systematic search.
I hope some of this is useful, and wish you all the best with your research.
Terri Doughty
English Dept., Malaspina University-College
Internet: doughty@mala.bc.ca