EDUCATION IS A WOMAN’S ASSET IN ELIZABETH GASKELL’S COUSIN PHILLIS

: The Victorian period was characterised by its landmark on the swift change of moral and social codes leaving an impact on the status of women which prompted reflections by thinkers and authors. The novelist, Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865), breaks new grounds by drawing attention to strategic education which helps women to construct gender identity. As such, education that enhances practical achievements for women stands for an empowering asset that serves to revisit the prevalent conventional norms of training women merely for the accomplishment of domestic tasks. This argument is backed up by supporting details provided through the applied text-based analysis method. Unlike readings of Cousin Phillis (1864) showing a woman’s educational outcome as limited to a failed romantic experience, a deep reading of Gaskell’s text provides a substantial understanding of the impact of a woman’s education which enlightens a woman’s mind to develop from ignorance t o knowledge, and from ‘foolishness’ to wisdom in the symbolic setting of Hope Farm. Therefore, the experience of the unaccomplished love affair is rewritten in terms of making it a womanly cultural experience that broadens her knowledge of herself and her practical needs in a pastoral environment. Becoming acquainted with the Latin and Italian languages and literature helps the character’s mind

Palavras-chave: Cultura vitoriana, Alfabetização, Feminilidade, Empoderamento, Gênero, Construção de identidade ABSTRACT: The Victorian period was characterised by its landmark on the swift change of moral and social codes leaving an impact on the status of women which prompted reflections by thinkers and authors. The novelist, Elizabeth Gaskell (1810Gaskell ( -1865, breaks new grounds by drawing attention to strategic education which helps women to construct gender identity. As such, education that enhances practical achievements for women stands for an empowering asset that serves to revisit the prevalent conventional norms of training women merely for the accomplishment of domestic tasks. This argument is backed up by supporting details provided through the applied text-based analysis method. Unlike readings of Cousin Phillis (1864) showing a woman's educational outcome as limited to a failed romantic experience, a deep reading of Gaskell's text provides a substantial understanding of the impact of a woman's education which enlightens a woman's mind to develop from ignorance to knowledge, and from 'foolishness' to wisdom in the symbolic setting of Hope Farm. Therefore, the experience of the unaccomplished love affair is rewritten in terms of making it a womanly cultural experience that broadens her knowledge of herself and her practical needs in a pastoral environment.
Becoming acquainted with the Latin and Italian languages and literature helps the character's mind culture-based issues rather than focusing on the illusory love story (despite its significance as a literary motif in the novella).
Gaskell's scholarship shows scant interest in education in pastoral literature. The theme of compulsory education for women does not take up enough space in literary criticism. In line with this requirement, teaching women what they need to learn rather than what society needs to teach them is not taken into consideration as a central issue. According to Shelston, "the choice of a name with traditional pastoral associations helps to remind us that one dimension of Cousin Phillis is pastoral rather than realist fiction" (p. 64). As put by Heidi Hansson, the female protagonist's name Phillis "introduces the whole body of pastoral literature -a genre where women characters are frequently spoken about, but less often speak for themselves" (p. 427). Hansson's statement backs up the rationale of selecting Cousin Phillis as a case study. The female protagonist, Phillis Holman, goes through controversial scenes of learning before reaching a level of maturity to disclose her mind and her internal feelings in the challenge of her paternal protective manners.

THE RATIONALE FOR SELECTING THE NOVEL
What has made Cousin Phillis a masterpiece still valid for investigation in the twentyfirst century is the Victorian historical and cultural purport of the period that is mirrored, to varying degrees, in the novella. And what has made the current topic of education worthy of study is the imposed need for promoting literacy among women.

RESEARCH PROBLEM
The selected novella Cousin Phillis raises thought-provoking questions about women's yearning for learning foreign languages and reading literature of different cultures.
Based upon this question, the main problem revolves around the examination of the type of education provided for women in the Victorian period and what alternatives Gaskell provides throughout her fictional narrative.

Hypothetical questions
In line with the problematic issue of this paper, hypothetical questions that embody the target of the paper are raised as follows. Was Victorian education intended to beautify Cousin Phillis and, second, it underpins the vitality of education as an apparatus to enhance a woman's literacy and strengthen her existential dimension in the fashioning process of the female identity.

Theory of gender as 'doing'
To come to terms with the set forth aim of the paper, the theory of gender as performativity promotes the effectiveness of constructing a new womanly experience via education for self-development. The theory of gender that has been developing across diverse disciplines was established by the philosopher and gender theorist, Judith Butler.
Her erudition is epitomized through her influential masterpiece Gender Trouble (1991) which tackles the problematic issue of gender identity construction and subversion. Butler underpins the importance of gender roles, which are not obviously framed in conformity with social expectations or "normative expectations" (Butler, 2004, p. 218). She states that "the body is only known through its gendered appearance" which implies that what the woman performs in terms of gendered speech, appearance, and daily work experience identifies her identity (Butler, 1997, p. 406). Therefore, gender identity is defined by what one is doing or is not doing. It is the way a person performs one's roles after selecting what best fits one's capabilities and choices. This is conceptualised by Butler who argues that gender is a performance, a "doing" or an act (Butler, 2004, p. 451) of a culturally constructed role.
In line with Butler's theory of gender as 'doing,' the feminine innocence in the Victorian family that is cherished as a woman's blessing is an act mirroring an internalised statement about women's docility. The Victorian concept of femininity and masculinity enhances the constructed educational content for each gender to normalise patriarchal constructs of femininity. 7 Within a complex power structure of a patriarchy-oriented culture, the female figure is drawn as silently obeying without resisting and listening without speaking. Advocating education for women and arguing that it is a woman's asset systematically implies the worth of education for gender identity construction. Gaskell's Cousin Phillis remains a masterpiece that appeals to twenty-first-century scholars to go deeper into the investigation of education as a trajectory of the reassessment of women's status in society. Therefore, the identification of the needs of women's education suggests selecting the appropriate teaching materials and methods in response to the needs.
However, the traditional femininity that is structured by the Law of the Father stands as an impediment while regulating women's learning environment which will be evidenced by Gaskell's novella.

Text-based analysis methodology
Embracing the constantly evolving theory of gender to interpret Gaskell's writings is a trajectory to trace the development of the protagonist's growth into a subject; an agency.
This becoming which is in contradiction to being (borrowing Simone de Beauvoir's 7 Gaskell's discourse is sometimes ambivalent as it presents the educational guidance in the possession of men. In Sylvia's Lovers, for example, the narrator puts that, "Sylvia's last protest against learning for the night, for … she turned docile, and really took pains to understand all that Philip could teach her" (p. 104).
concept) 8 , is the performance or the doing of one's role and performing one's gender as circumstances require the woman subject to do. This gendered aspect will be further supported by textual clues endorsing the deconstruction of the traditional discourse on women's education. the substantial means to manage a household, learn self-renunciation norms of behaviour and establish a comfortable domestic sphere. As such, gendered and sex-based education which entailed feminine self-abnegation was initially backed up by some women whose writings served to endorse patriarchal authority at the expense of women's abjection.

EDUCATION IN GASKELL'S WRITINGS
Other writings by intellectual women in Victorian scholarship advocating women's empowerment have not taken their rightful place although the period was governed by the Queen andEmpress Victoria (1837-1901). Being an age of transition at all levels (Fyfe, 2013) in a post-Industrial Revolution period, education as an enlightening means was a privilege for many men and a few upper and middle-class women as it was influenced by class and gender in terms of the distinct quality of not only the teaching materials but also the environment where education takes place. Noticeably, Victorian society was affected by class division, poverty, marginalisation, and above all, gender distinctions. Gaskell wanted to establish her position "through her education" which influenced her writing style although "she was pulled by conflicting vices __ the Unitarian call to independence and the conventional appeal to submission" (Uglow,p. 83 husband's talk …/ With pretty 'may it please you,' or 'so it is,'-/ Their rapid insight and fine aptitude… /And never say 'no' when the world says 'ay,'/ She liked a woman to be womanly" (Browning). Education of women as Browning's Aurora Leigh demonstrates should provide the substantial means to manage a household, to learn self-renunciation rules and selfdenial norms of behaviour to establish a comfortable domestic sphere. Such requirements were judged as sacred values during Victorian times. In fact, the holy aspect of the gendered norms complicated the role of social critics and thinkers, such as Gaskell, to continuously question the established set of feminine norms of education.

EDUCATION IS A KEY ISSUE IN SOCIAL PROBLEM NOVELS
9 In one of the narrative scenes of North and South, Mr. Bell tells his opinion about women's education when Mr. Hale criticises his daughter's dislike of schooling when she was a child (NS, p. 368). The same opinion of disliking school is shared by Sylvia Robson who "did not like learning, and did not want him for her teacher; so she answered in a dry little tone" (p. 74), as put by the narrator. Rejecting to learn writing words on the pretext of its futility, Sylvia addresses her mother shouting "If I could see t' use on 't, I'd ha' axed father to send me t' school; but I'm none wanting to have learning'" (p. 90).
Before delving into the discussion of education in Gaskell's work, it is worth highlighting that education represents, to varying degrees, a key issue in the social problem novels. While industrialised Britain evoked paradoxical views of its mechanical progress (Carlyle, 1829;Mill, 1831;Engels, 1884;Fyfe, 2013), Being a self-educated persona who has acquired business jargon by herself, Margaret Hale in North and South bravely constructs her profile as a woman leader struggling with challenges from an orthodox member of her society; her mother is not exempt. Thanks to her learning, Margaret's mind develops critical thinking to interrogate prominent aspects of industrial society related to class antagonism. Upon acquainting herself with the Northern dialect of business, which is considered as the manly sphere, Margaret's mother condemns the young woman's attempt at "picking up a great deal of vulgarity …. factory slang" (NS, p.  Gaskell's sustainable interest in education for young women keeps developing and burgeoning in a logical process of writing from the early publication of Mary Barton to the last one Wives and Daughters. The latter is a posthumous novel that marks the vitality of education for both genders, men and women, with an emphasis on the class dimension and its prospective success when it becomes a key indicator of selecting a suitable partner. This complicated argument about education cannot be elaborated in Gaskell's novels without the sense of humour that is skilfully interwoven throughout the fictional discourse.
Attempting to captivate the heart of Osborne and/ or his brother Roger Hamley, as Mrs Clare Kirkpatrick wishes, Cynthia is exposed "holding a three-day's-old newspaper in her hand, which she was making a pretence of reading" before when she was interrupted by her mother's abrupt instruction to select a book instead of a newspaper to "improve" herself (WD, p. 267). What Mrs Kirkpatrick (later becomes Mrs Gibson) means by her daughter's improvement of herself is ambiguous because the purpose of a woman's growth to maturity is not straightforwardly defined.

EDUCATION MATTERS IN COUSIN PHILLIS
The Unitarian background is eminent in Gaskell's interest in education for country girls. Gaskell emphasises the shift between the agrarian south and the industrial north and affiliates it with feminine emancipation to perform gender roles in spaces that are allowed for individual development. Accordingly, country girls, namely Ruth Hilton in Ruth (1856) In the challenge of the overwhelming materialistic norms of the industrial society, the narrator (who could be the author's mouthpiece), tries to evoke the vitality of education for young women. Jeni Curtis argues that "Paul's overt concern is to record an in the promotion of innocence which equates to ignorance. Being exposed to Paul's gaze as an abject body that is silently sewing or knitting, as portrayed by the male narrator. Phillis' 10 Virgil's famous poem, Georgics (29 BCE), deals with agriculture and love as a passionate feeling shared by humans and animals as beings. What is resonant about its selection in Cousin Phillis is that Georgics contains "Virgil's passionate denunciation of the power of amor over the world of nature […] ln the reminiscence of Varius there are suggestions of the darker side of passion that prepare the reader for the generalization of this theme at the midpoint of the book. Attention focuses naturally on what the poet says here about the destructive consequences of amor for humans" (Knox,p. 46 Captivated by Phillis's beauty, Paul's masculinity turns his attention from considering his cousin a human being with the potential to learn to an object of feminine beauty whose calm performance while studying astonishes him. She "was sitting at her work quietly enough, and her hair was looking more golden, her dark eyelashes longer, her round pillar of a throat whiter than ever" (p. 235). The gendered implications are saturated in the text to impose a traditional aspect of assessing a woman's physical attractiveness rather than cognitive capabilities.
Paul's mental portrait mirrors his childish manner of comparing himself with the young woman who is two years younger than him but physically taller than him. Instead of figuring out a scheme to encourage her to learn, he "dreamed that [he] was as tall as cousin Phillis, and had a sudden and miraculous growth of whisker" (p. 240). What the narrator embodies is the masculine discourse in the Victorian period that obstructs women's intellectual progress. Paul's concept of virility combines appearance and learning. This perception of manhood is illustrated in his dream of a "miraculous growth of whisker" and learning to attain a "more miraculous" intellectual "acquaintance with Latin and Greek" (p.

240). The blend looks plausible because it implies an author's vision of the rise of decent
men yearning for intellectual improvement which will be fruitful, in some measure, to advocate women's intellectual growth despite cultural challenges.
Gaskell's narrative further ridicules the narrator's position compared to that of the female character when he starts inventing a strategy to allow himself to perform the role of a knowledgeable man raising the question of a young beginner. "I could question cousin Although the congruity between the type of education provided for Phillis Holman is not relevant to woman's expectations, she has developed herself to maturity. Her tutor is a man whose posture, as provided by the narrator, leaves no doubt that he is making use of his being an educated male, a knowledgeable engineer, and a prestigious person whose reputation is his asset. Her father "still insists that Phillis remain[s] a child. Any emotional responses and any traces of her burgeoning sexuality have to be suppressed" (Hansson,p. 433). Needless to doubt his good intention and determination to make Phillis well educated even by giving her a novel to read without consulting her father as Paul suggests.

PATRIARCHAL INFLUENCE ON WOMEN'S EDUCATION
Phillis Holman's childhood experience has its impact on her slow progress while being surrounded by men belonging to different age groups and holding utilitarian knowledge of their daily activities. Learning for Mr Holman, Paul and Holdsworth is of utility "in its direct connection to social advancement; learning is rising and "manning": promotion, partnership, the boss's daughter, and one's own carriage" (Rogers,p. 30).
Nevertheless, the deep-seated Victorian standards of femininity entail tensions between the daughter who, inherently, likes to broaden her knowledge, and her parents, especially the father figure whose status represents an impediment along the journey of his daughter's struggle with self-construction. Domestic ideology endorses the naturalised/ normalised patriarchal culture that Victorian fiction critically presents. Gaskell highlights the manly power in the process of tutoring. During a conversation between Paul and Holdsworth, the latter informs Paul about his suggestion to Phillis to read Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed. I quote: 'I had a capital novel by Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi, just the thing for a beginner; and if she must still puzzle out Dante, my dictionary is far better than hers.' 'Then she found out you had written those definitions on her list of words?' 'Oh! yes'-with a smile of amusement and pleasure. He was going to tell me what had taken place, but checked himself. 'But I don't think the minister will like your having given her a novel to read? '. (p. 264) Upon hearing Holdsworth's suggestion, the only question that Paul raises is whether Phillis' father allows his daughter to read it or not: "I don't think the minister will like your having given her a novel to read" (264). By inference, men control the type of reading available for women as guardians of virtue.
Upon the publication of Ruth, fathers and husbands prevented their wives and daughter from reading the novel that bestows forgiveness on a fallen woman who infringed the Victorian norms of sexuality. Accordingly, the domination of patriarchy in Victorian society designs women's taste in reading on the pretext of protecting innocent females against moral deviation. Again, the traditional concept of imprisoned women is unavoidable despite Phillis's access to the world of knowledge, the manly world of experience, and the authority of learning and literacy to manage the industrial and mechanical world. While interweaving the thread of the construction of Phillis's identity through education, the influential factors that affect her female experience are related to the farming environment.
This ecological context connotes its challenges in framing the learning process under patriarchal supervision. Therefore, the environment of teaching Phillis, who is a sample of country girls, reveals the clash between the womanly desire to attain intellectual enlightenment and the male penchant to endorse the patriarchal mindset. In defiance of this challenge, education in Gaskell's fiction remains an apparatus to revisit the prevailing gender-based discrepancies.

UNCOMFORTABLE MALE GAZE AND ILLUSORY LOVE
Phillis's pastoral milieu favours her subordinate position aligning with male-cultural constructs of femininity. We mentioned in this paper how Paul's gaze embarrasses Phillis although she does not utter a word. Now, Phillis is embarrassed by Holdsworth's penetrating gaze, which casts doubt on the teacher's mission of enlightenment. The question of inviting a male teacher to train a female is not congruous if we claim that Gaskell's fiction advocates unbiased-gender training. Despite its crucial importance, the female psyche is not considered an issue. The act of Holdsworth's drawing Phillis alludes to eroticism.
Accustomed to repressive scenarios of silence, Phillis cannot articulate troubled or tormented feelings in words upon encountering the male gaze. Although Holdsworth's discourse is embellished with civility and grace, the sexual arousal is not camouflaged. The textual clues are abundant to back up this idea. Addressing Phillis, Holdsworth requests her: "I beg your pardon, but I want hair loosely flowing" (p. 272). The narrator closely observes to comment that the teacher: [B]egan to draw, looking intently at Phillis; I could see this stare of his discomposed her-her colour came and went, her breath quickened with the consciousness of his regard; at last, when he said, 'Please look at me for a minute or two, I want to get in the eyes,' she looked up at him, quivered, and suddenly got up and left the room.

CRAVING FOR AUTONOMY TO PROMOTE IDENTITY
The concept of craving for autonomy is difficult for Phillis. Despite its challenging nature, the peculiarities of a cultivated woman's gender identity remain a site of deconstruction and innovation toward the establishment of a non-stereotypical personality.
Examining the layers of meanings include the metaphorical pastoral innocence that is wrestling with Phillis's desire to transcend domestic ideology and the separate spheres' theory. Gaskell's discourse on country women's education comprises clues to a wide scope of futuristic vision. The promising education in the Holman's house is gauged through the change in the female's mind and heart which should be grasped by the father, too. A learned woman's status is more privileged in her society as well as outside of it. During a discussion with his convention-biased father, Paul twists in his mind the feasibility of Phillis becoming a future wife. While his father describes Phillis as a good fit for his son, Paul hesitates to avow that Phills's education is an asset as it could be an impediment: 'You see she's so clever she's more like a man than a woman-she knows Latin and Greek.' 'She'd forget 'em, if she'd a houseful of children,' was my father's comment on this. 'But she knows many a thing besides, and is wise as well as learned; she has been so much with her father. She would never think much of me, and I should like my wife to think a deal of her husband. ' (p. 251) Providing the right educational model and adequate materials for developing Phillis's intellect can be an asset to redefining her position in her community.
In fact, the act of revisiting for the sake of rewriting women's teaching method allows a deconstruction of prevailing norms of the Victorian conception of literacy as evidenced by the textual clues in Cousin Phillis. Paul naively supposes that her learning course has made her develop into a man more than a woman. Some critics consider Gaskell's Cousin Phillis as a mere mockery of women's intellectual evolution by focusing on the dramatization of women's struggle against the male gaze and the dilemma of unrequited love. However, aligning with the objective of this paper, the novella provides readers with textual clues in support of the pragmatic journey toward a woman's liberation to gradually free her mind from the imposed cultural constructs of femininity. Becoming a learned daughter, " [Phillis] always did right in her parents' eyes out of her natural simple goodness and wisdom" (p.

290).
Nascent femininity on the Hope Farm has been embellished thanks to Phillis's education. As put by the narrator who smartly remarks that Phillis becomes knowledgeable of "the different broods of chickens, and she showed [him] the hens that were good mothers, and told [him] the characters of all the poultry with the utmost good faith" (p. 289).
Meticulous examination of the register of words Paul uses to emphasise the practical knowledge Phillis becomes acquainted with to use in her daily farming activities. This development in Phillis's profile endorses Butler's theory of gender as "performativity," and as doing (1991, p. 128 The post-revelation scene is also promising more than the revelation itself because it projects a mature phase of feminine identity construction aspiring its power from cosmic values of social justice. Although the revelation is aesthetically dramatised, because it discloses pain and pleasure, it is representative of womanly growth within the pastoral community. Phillis' critical, social, intellectual, and emotional development is an outcome of her education that conducts her through the humanisation and identity construction process despite its emotional ambiguity. Finally, it is safe to state that Phillis's emerging predisposition to become acquainted with the ethics of autonomy along with the code of gender and morality is witnessed in her brave declaration of love without dramatising the unconsummated love. Loving Holdsworth rather than Paul conforms to the vision of adhering to modernism and progress. Both are evidenced in Holdsworth's portrait as an engineer, a teacher who is open to foreign languages and cultures like the Italian one. These attributes are valorised by the enthusiastic student, Phillis, whose "mother bring (sic) her the Latin and Italian books she had been so fond of before her illness" (p. 316). Gaskell's narrative advocates the education of women in the early model of gender equality which simultaneously privileges experiential and practical education. However, it is not stated clearly whether attaining this objective requires a good gender-based suit to tutor young women or not. Admittedly, Holdsworth does not show objection to Phillis's reading the novel about a romantic topic; an issue that Mrs Clare in Wives and Daughters rejects as she advises her daughter, Cynthia, to read a book about history. 15 Despite the character's ambivalence, Gaskell's fictional discourse supports women's education by men as an experience to develop an independent feminine identity in the promotion of womanly emancipation. As such, gender relations and the evolution of women's intellectual position are interwoven within the discourse of genderbiased education.
Literacy and the social codes of behaviour were not consistent with the developing industrialised British society. Intellectuals did not share views about the same education that should be provided for both genders. This inconsistency between economic progress and ethical progress represents a social dimension of women's education. Social awareness of the futility of cultural conventions which are sex-biased is required to revise women's status in the Victorian family and, of course, society. According to Philip Rogers, Gaskell "stresses the utility of learning for males in its direct connection to social advancement; learning is rising and "manning": promotion, partnership, the boss's daughter, and one's own carriage" (p. 30). Education could be seen as an individual achievement of Phillis; but in reality, it is a key indicator of national identity. It is representative of cultural strategies stressing mechanical economic and social progress in which women's education is important to enhance the aspect of being rather than doing. Phillis's practical education epitomises authorial rejection of the circle of the male tutors especially the narrator whose description and reports about Phillis are subjective to distort her womanly valour within a community of men and a silent mother. Education marks Phillis's mental and psychological growth.
Wandering alone with Paul on the Hope Farm without reluctance or any aspect of anxiety signifies self-confidence and belief in her identity as a free woman.

CONCLUSION
Gaskell's preoccupation with key issues related to women's identity construction underscores education as a prerequisite to establishing feminine power. Education is mostly a personal achievement and an asset to assess the developing spirit of country girls.
Revisiting pure femininity as is the case of Phillis transforms into enhancing experience and knowledge. The burgeoning critical mind of the iconoclastic female character, Phillis, epitomises the progressively positive shift despite the overprotective paternal authority.
Education is not to blindly fall in love with man's authority as much as to grow enlightened about one's femininity across the journey of the female quest for identity construction. The deconstruction of the Law of the Father, which aesthetically still requires sophistication in Cousin Phillis is revealed through the deficiency of the paternal role during the erotic scenes of Holdsworth's drawing. The withdrawal of paternal authority is also illustrated through Paul's clear statements that his cousin has been growing to maturity after being acquainted with rational reasoning tools and uncommon wisdom. This wisdom is a female attribute of learned women. In Gaskell's short story "Lizzie Leigh", the teacher Susan Palmer voluntarily takes care of Lizzie Leigh's abandoned baby and saves it. Miss Palmer's mind is enlightened to comfort the traumatised and shocked Leigh's family, especially the mother and her son. Phillis does not describe her emotional experience as frustrating because it is not consummated in marriage. Education and a woman's romantic experience in Phillis's case become organically combined to construct knowledge. Thus, the conventional standard prescribing love as the pivot of a woman's threshold to attaining her earthly ideal is a fallacy.
She explores her emotional experience to free herself from the socially imposed taboo of feminine sexuality without performing sexuality.
Through the apparatus of education, a woman's self-fashioning within the frame of interconnected gendered relationships is a rewarding experience. Upon elucidating the importance of education as a woman's asset endorsing her empowerment by attaining