Victorian Age

English Victorian Society and Women Roles

● The reign of Queen Victoria, from 1837 to 1901, marked the period
known in history as the Victorian era. It was a time of great change.

● The population of England represented various classes, occupations,

and ways of life.

● The transportation of the period served as the forerunner of much of

the transportation used today and the advances in medicine were
also instrumental in changing the face of medicine forever.
● One of the most important things to know in Victorian society was
good etiquette. Both men and women had their own set of rules of
etiquette. There was a rule of etiquette for almost everything you did
in a day.
● For women, there were rules about what kind of jewelry one should
wear as well as when and where. Who to walk with, who to dance with,
how and when to speak to a stranger, were all very critical knowledge.
● For men, there were rules about bowing, hat tipping, chaperonage,
where to sit and next to whom, even about the circumstances in which
it was correct or not to smoke or drink in front of ladies. There was
also a correct title for almost every type of profession, social standing
and rank.
 The Victorian View of Woman

● The Victorian era is characterized as the domestic age, the age of the home. This
was epitomized by Queen Victoria herself who came to represent a kind of
femininity centered on the family, motherhood and respectability.
● Queen Victoria devoted her life to Prince Albert. Her domestic life became the
ideal that spread over the 19th century. The popular Victorian image of the ideal
woman and wife came to be known as the “Angel in the House”. The woman was
expected to be devoted to her husband and bow to him.
● The “Angel” had the following characteristics: passive, powerless, meek,
charming, graceful with her dresses, sympathetic, self-sacrificing, moral and
above all, pure.
 The role of women
● The women ran the household, bore the children and were nurses, mothers,
wives, neighbors, friends and teachers but they had no standing in the
society.
● Despite the fact that the Reform Bills of 1832 and 1867 changed voting
rights by granting a political voice to many among the working class who
had not enjoyed any such voice before, women were not included in these
reforms.
● In fact, although been an era of great social change, the Victorian period
(particularly its early and middle periods) saw little progress for women’s
right. Women had limited access to education, could not vote or hold public
office, and could not (until ‘870) own property.
● Debates about women’s right were referred to generally as “The Woman
Question”(one of many issues in an age of issues).
 The role of women
● It should be remembered that while the “Woman Question” often sought,
at least in principle, rights for all women, it was primarily addressed to
women of the middle class.
● In other words, while women argued for access to employment and
complained about the stereotypical fate of the middle-class wife, who had
to spend her time at home with insignificant trivial pursuits, hundreds of
thousands of lower-class women worked in grueling industrial conditions
in mines and mills.
● In 1848, the first women's college was established; women were otherwise
excluded from England’s three universities.
 The Rights of Women
● Debates about gender did not necessarily fall down gendered lines: many
men argued adamantly for women’s rights, and many women (like Queen
Victoria herself) wew not convinced that women should enjoy equality with
men.
● By the mid 19th century, middle and upper class women were beginning to
come together to campaign for:
○ married women’s right
○ improved secondary education
○ access to higher education
○ training and employment opportunities
○ admission to the professions
○ votes for women
 The Woman of 1880 and 1890

● Smoking, swearing, riding a bike, debating in public, wearing men’s

clothing, refusing marriage.
● a figure of greater sexual, social, and economic independence
● women experience greater acces to education, employment, political and
legal rights and civic visibility.
 Women Writers
● The Bronte sisters produced some of the literary masterpieces of this
period. In 1847, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, set amidst the
forbidding moors of Yorkshire, is a tale of unresolved passions which draws
a lively picture of contemporary society. Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre
which narrates the growth of a young woman. The tales are firmly
grounded in a sense of high morality. In 1848, Anne Bronte wrote The
Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
● The other famous writers of the Victorian era include George Elliot or Mary
Ann Evans who adopted a male pseudonym to distance herself from the
lighthearted romances with which women writers of the time were
associated. Her novels like Middlemarch and Silas Merner are based in
realism and provide deep psychological insights. Thackeray’s Vanity Fair
provide a satiric commentary on the age.
 Women Writers

● Eizabeth Barret Browning (1806-1861), married to Robert Browning, who

raided the Dramatic Monologue, they were one of literature’s greatest love
affairs. She was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian Era.
Notable work: How Do I Love Thee? (sonnet 43)
● Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810-1865) published, anonymously in 1848,
Mary Barton that had a huge impact on the reading public and provoked
widespread discussion. Its subject matter - the appalling state of
impoverished workers in the industrial centres of the North and her
sympathetic treatment of their plight - pricked the consciente of a nation.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
● BURGESS, Anthony. English Literature. London: Longman
Ltd., 1996.
● https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-unjustl
y-overlooked-victorian-novelist-elizabeth-gaskell
● https://gaskellsociety.co.uk/elizabeth-gaskell/
● https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/victorian-era-
timeline
● https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/gender
-roles-in-the-19th-century
● https://victorian-era.org/roles-of-women-in-the-victorian-
era.html

● https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/trail/victorian_britain/wome
n_out/urban_life_01.shtml