52 Gender and Space in Rural Britain, 1840–1920
as a ‘fl inging, roaring sea [which] seemed to be crying thieves and murder at the
fi shermen’. Rather than yielding them food, the sea is a ‘grey hissing spectre’ out
of whose teeth they must try to steal their catch.^56
In his appreciation of their physical prowess Robert overlooks the despera-
tion which makes such activity necessary and is blinded to the reality that they
too may soon be as idle as he. Th ese men are scrambling to bring the catch in
from boats which are ‘stranded at the water’s edge’ not safely secured.^57 Th ey
need people like Mr Blewett and Mr Forrester to ‘lend a hand’^58 and the calls to
‘Haul – Up with her! Haul – Up with her!’ comes from ‘a dozen gasping throats’
as does the ‘confused shout of Up, up, up!’.^59 Th ere is fear here rather than tri-
umph and always present is the potential failure of the masculine abilities Robert
so admires to bring in the catch.
Robert’s vision of the physical prowess of the men is also undercut by the
text which registers instead that the exertions were ‘making hunchbacks, crip-
ples, miracles of ugliness of the straightest and comeliness’.^60 Robert’s vision of
masculinity is literally dismantled as the men cannot be seen fully in the dark-
ness. Only parts of their bodies can be glimpsed in the wavering lantern light
which ‘caught here a face, there a trunk, or an elbow, or one leg to the neglect
of its fellow’.^61 Th e text even expresses incredulity that ‘somehow’ the ‘grievous
muscular toil took majestic proportions in Maurice’s eyes’ suggesting not only
that it was diffi cult to see events in the ‘darkness and uproar’^62 but equally that
Robert could not see everything that was going on and so has supplied his vision
from his sense of his own emasculation. Th e text, therefore, continually under-
mines Robert’s vision, ultimately showing the fi shermen to be at the mercy of,
not only the sea, but of a fi sh which is ‘absurdly little by itself, to set all this toil
and excitement in motion’.^63 Gender categories are not stable in the space of the
beach which the two groups occupy but are in a state of fl ux and uncertainty.
Th e instability of gender codes in the beach scene is contextualized by the
historical reality of the fi shing industry in Cornwall, Cornwall’s economic
future, and how this intersects with the beach as a rural space. For an island
nation such as Britain, and for a territory such a Cornwall with 250 miles of
coastline, the beach is a site of possible invasion via the sea: Cornwall’s maritime
history includes, for example, a Spanish invasion in 1595 when 400 men landed
at Mousehole and Newlyn.^64 In the beach scene, however, that threat of invasion
is reversed and, while the sea poses its own danger, it is the artist colony which is
actually the invading foreign element. Th e invasion or colonization of the coastal
space now comes from the land rather than the sea as the artists descend from
the Wilmingtons’ house which is located on the hill overlooking the beach.
On the surface their presence on the beach appears to be entirely benign.
Th ey have, aft er all, been invited to witness the bringing in of the catch by Mr
Blewett, who ensconces them on a ‘little eminence’.^65 Yet when we connect their
presence with the wider historical and cultural context, and with the discussion