The Woodlanders

As her honeymoon draws to a close, Grace sees Giles and a group of men preparing apples for cider fermentation in the yard outside. Observing Giles “moiling and muddling” (148) like this, Grace reflects that she could never have married him. Likewise, Dr. Fitzpiers says that he feels as if he “belonged to a different species” (149) from those men. In both deed and dialogue, work and labor are seen by the characters in the novel as an inverse barometer of social status. The more removed from labor, especially physical labor, you are, the higher your class. Conversely, the more involved you are with labor, the lower your status. Mrs. Charmond, for this reason, sits at the top. She is a woman who does no work whatsoever, is taken everywhere by carriage, and is so elevated that she needs someone else to write down her thoughts for her. As she herself puts it, “I think sometimes I was born to live and do nothing, nothing, nothing but float about, as we fancy we do sometimes in dreams” (51).

Dr. Fitzpiers’s social status is more ambiguous than Mrs. Charmond’s, though both idleness and work affect how he views others and vice versa.