Women in the Victorian era
Encyclopedia
The status of women
in the Victorian era
is often seen as an illustration of the striking discrepancy between the United Kingdom
's national power and wealth and what many, then and now, consider its appalling social conditions. During the era symbolized by the reign of British monarch
Queen Victoria
, women did not have suffrage rights, the right to sue, or the right to own property. At the same time, women participated in the paid workforce in increasing numbers following the Industrial Revolution
. Feminist ideas spread among the educated female middle classes, discriminatory laws were repealed, and the women's suffrage
movement gained momentum in the last years of the Victorian Era.
", meaning the husband as head of the household and moral leader of his family, was firmly entrenched in British culture. A wife's proper role was to love, honour and obey her husband, as her marriage vows stated. But far from being considered unimportant, although a wife's place in the family hierarchy was secondary to her husband, a wife's duty to support her husband and properly raise her children were considered crucial cornerstones of social stability by the Victorians. Women seen as falling short of society's expectations were believed to be deserving of harsh criticism. Representations of ideal wives were abundant in Victorian culture, providing women with their role models.
The Victorian ideal of the tirelessly patient, sacrificing wife is depicted in The Angel in the House
, a popular poem by Coventry Patmore
, published in 1854:
The poem became such a touchstone of British culture that in a lecture to the Women's Service League in 1942, Virginia Woolf
said "killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer":
. Here she explained that the mistress of a household is comparable to the commander of an army or the leader of an enterprise. To run a respectable household and secure the happiness, comfort and well-being of her family she must perform her duties intelligently and thoroughly. For example, she had to organize, delegate and instruct her servants, which was not an easy task as many of them were not reliable. Isabella Beeton's upper-middle-class readers may also have had a large complement of "domestics", which created a staff requiring supervision by the mistress of the house. Beeton advises her readers to maintain a "housekeeping account book" to track spending. She recommends daily entries and checking the balance monthly. In addition to tracking servants' wages, the mistress of the house was responsible for tracking payments to trades such as butchers and bakers. If a household had the means to hire a housekeeper, whose duties included keeping the household accounts, Beeton goes so far as to advise readers to check the accounts of housekeepers regularly to ensure nothing was amiss.
Beeton provided a table of domestic servant roles and their appropriate weekly pay scale ("found in livery
" was the expression referring to the employer providing a domestic employee with meals and a work uniform). The sheer number of Victorian servants and their expected duties makes it clear why expertise in logistical matters would benefit the mistress of the house. Beeton indicates that the full list of servants in this table would be expected in the household of a "wealthy nobleman"; her readers are instructed to adjust staff size and pay according to the household's available budget, and other factors such as a servant's level of experience:
"The Household General" was expected to organize parties and dinners to bring prestige to her husband, also making it possible for them to network. Beeton gives extensively detailed instructions on how to supervise servants in preparation for hosting dinners and balls. The etiquette to be observed in sending and receiving formal invitations is given, as well as the etiquette to be observed at the events themselves. The mistress of the house also had an important role in supervising the education of the youngest children. Beeton makes it clear that a woman's place is in the home, and her domestic duties come first. Social activities as an individual were less important than household management and socializing as her husband's companion. They were to be strictly limited:
Advice books on housekeeping and the duties of an ideal wife were plentiful during the Victorian era, and sold well among the middle class. In addition to Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, there were Infant Nursing and the Management of Young Children (1866) and Practical Housekeeping; or, the duties of a home-wife (1867) by Mrs. Frederick Pedley, and From Kitchen to Garret by Jane Ellen Panton, which went through 11 editions in a decade. Shirley Forster Murphy a doctor and medical writer, wrote the influential Our Homes, and How to Make them Healthy (1883), before he served as London's chief medical officer in the 1890s.
Domestic chores for women without servants meant a great deal of washing and cleaning during the Victorian era. Coal-dust from stoves (and factories) was the bane of the Victorian woman's housekeeping existence. It coated windows (carried by wind and fog), clothing, and furniture and rugs inside the home. Washing clothing and linens would usually be done one day a week, scrubbed by hand in a large zinc or copper tub. Some water would be heated and added to the wash tub, and perhaps a handful of soda to soften the water. Curtains were taken down and washed every fortnight
; they were often so blackened by coal smoke that they had to be soaked in salted water before being washed. Scrubbing the front wooden doorstep of the home every morning was also an important chore to maintain respectability.
in 1929). Women lost the rights to the property they brought into the marriage, even following divorce; a husband had complete legal control over any income earned by his wife; women were not allowed to open banking accounts; and married women were not able to conclude a contract
without her husband's legal approval. These property restrictions made it difficult or impossible for a woman to leave a failed marriage, or to exert any control over her finances if her husband was incapable or unwilling to do so on her behalf.
Domestic violence towards wives was given increasing attention by social and legal reformers as the 19th century continued. The first animal-cruelty legislation in Britain was passed in 1824, however, legal protection from domestic violence was not granted to women until 1853 with the Act for the Better Prevention and Punishment of Aggravated Assaults upon Women and Children. Even this law did not outright ban violence by a man against his wife and children; it imposed legal limits on the amount of force that was permitted.
Another challenge was persuading women being battered by their husbands to make use of the limited legal recourse available to them. In 1843, an organization founded by animal-rights and pro-temperance activists was established to help this social cause. The organization that became known as the Associate Institute for Improving and Enforcing the Laws for the Protection of Women and Children hired inspectors who brought prosecutions of the worst cases. It focused its efforts on work-class women, since Victorian practise was to deny that middle-class or aristocratic families were in need of such intervention. There were sometimes cracks in the facade of propriety. In 1860, Mr. J. Walter, MP for Berkshire
, stated in the House of Commons that if members "looked to the revelations in the Divorce Court they might well fear that if the secrets of all households were known, these brutal assaults upon women were by no means confined to the lower classes". A strong deterrent to middle-class or aristocratic wives seeking legal recourse, or divorce, was the social stigma and shunning that would follow such revelations in a public trial.
laws and the legal rights of women to divorce and/or gain custody of children. The situation that fathers always received custody
of their children, leaving the mother without any rights, slowly started to change. The Custody of Infants Act
in 1839 gave mothers of unblemished character access to their children in the event of separation
or divorce
, and the Matrimonial Causes Act
in 1890 gave women limited access to divorce. But while the husband only had to prove his wife's adultery
, a woman had to prove her husband had not only committed adultery but also incest
, bigamy
, cruelty
or desertion
.In 1873 the Custody of Infants Act extended access to children to all women in the event of separation or divorce. In 1878, after an amendment
to the Matrimonial Causes Act, women could secure a separation on the grounds of cruelty and claim custody of their children. Magistrate
s even authorized protection orders to wives whose husbands have been convicted of aggravated assault. An important change was caused by an amendment to the Married Women's Property Act in 1884. This legislation recognized that wives were not chattel
, or property belonging to the husband, but an independent and separate person. Through the Guardianship of Infants Act in 1886, women could be made the sole guardian
of their children if their husband died. Women slowly had their rights changed so that they could eventually leave their husbands for good. Some notable dates include:
However, despite the fact that Victorians considered the mention of women's undergarments in mixed company unacceptable, men's entertainment made great comedic material out of the topic of ladies' bloomer
s, including men's magazines and music hall skits.
Equestrian riding was an exerting pastime that became popular as a leisure activity among the growing middle classes. Many etiquette manuals for riding were published for this new market. For women, preserving modesty while riding was crucial. Breeches and riding trousers for women were introduced, for the practical reason of preventing chafing, yet these were worn under the dress. Riding clothes for women were made at the same tailors that made men's riding apparel, rather than at a dressmaker, so female assistants were hired to help with fittings.
The advent of colonialism and world travel presented new obstacles for women. Travel on horseback (or on donkeys, or even camels) was often impossible to do sidesaddle because the animal had not been "broken" (trained) for sidesaddle riding. Riding costumes for women were introduced that used breeches or zouave
trousers beneath long coats in some countries, while jodhpur
breeches used by men in India were adopted by women. These concessions were made so that women could ride astride a horse when necessary, but they were still exceptions to the rule of riding sidesaddle until after World War I. Travel writer Isabella Bird
(1831-1904) was instrumental in challenging this taboo. At age 42, she traveled abroad on a doctor's recommendation. In Hawaii, she determined that seeing the islands riding sidesaddle was impractical, and switched to riding astride. She was an ambitious traveller, going to the American West, the Rocky Mountains, Japan, China, Baghdad, Tehran, and the Black Sea. Her written accounts sold briskly.
Women's physical activity was a cause of concern at the highest levels of academic research during the Victorian era. In Canada, physicians debated the appropriateness of women using bicycles:
. Victorian literature and art was full of examples of women paying dearly for straying from moral expectations. Adulteresses met tragic ends in novels such as Anna Karenina
by Tolstoy
, Madame Bovary
by Flaubert, while in Tess of the d'Urbervilles
, Thomas Hardy
depicts a heroine punished by her community for losing her virginity before marriage (the result of her being raped). While some writers and artists showed sympathy towards women's subjugation to this double-standard, some works were didactic and reinforced the cultural norm.
' in 1864. Women suspected of being unclean were subjected to an involuntary genital examination. Refusal was punishable by imprisonment; diagnosis with an illness was punishable by involuntary confinement to hospital until perceived as cured.
The disease prevention law was only applied to women, which became the primary rallying point for activists who argued that the law was both ineffective and inherently unfair to women. The exams were inexpertly performed by male police, women could be suspected based on little to no evidence, and the exams were painful and humiliating. After two extensions of the law in 1866 and 1869 the unjust acts were finally repealed in 1886. Josephine Butler
was a women's rights crusader who fought to repeal the Acts.
Education was specialized by gender. Women were provided with the opportunity to study refined subjects such as history
, geography
and general literature which would provide them with interesting but noncontroversial topics for discussion.
Despite the restrictions and stigmatization, some women did excel in "male" subjects such as law
, physics
, engineering
, science
and art
. These women pioneered the path for the much improved gender equality in modern education in the UK.
Women were rarely given the opportunity to attend university
. It was even said that studying was against their nature and could make them ill. They were to stay more or less an "ornament of society."
.
Throughout the Victorian era, some women were employed in heavy industry such as coal mines and the steel industry. Although they were employed in fewer numbers as the Victorian era continued and employment laws changed, they could still be found in certain roles. Before the Mines and Collieries Act 1842, women (and children) worked underground as "hurriers" who carted tubs of coal up through the narrow mine shafts. In Wolverhampton, the law did not have much of an impact on women's mining employment, because they mainly worked above-ground at the coal mines, sorting coal, loading canal boats, and other surface tasks.Women also traditionally did "all the chief tasks in agriculture" in all counties of England, as a government inquiry found in 1843. By the late 1860s, agricultural work was not paying well, and women turned to industrial employment.
In areas with industrial factories, women could find employment on assembly lines for items ranging from locks to canned food. Industrial laundry services employed many women (including inmates of Magdalene asylums who did not receive wages for their work). Women were also commonly employed in the textile mills that sprang up during the industrial revolution in such cities as Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham. Working for a wage was often done from the home in London, although many women worked as "hawkers" or street vendors, who sold such things as watercress, lavendar, flowers or herbs that they would collect at the Spitalfields fruit and vegetable market. Many working-class women worked as washerwomen, taking in laundry for a fee. Animal-breeding in slum flats was common, such as dogs, geese, rabbits and birds, to be sold at animal and bird markets. Housing inspectors often found livestock in slum cellars, including cows and donkeys.Spinning and winding wool, silk, and other types of piecework were a common way of earning income by working from home, but wages were very low, and hours were long; often 14 hours per day were needed to earn enough to survive.. Furniture-assembling and -finishing were common piecework jobs in working-class households in London that paid relatively well. Women in particular were known as skillful "french polishers" who completed the finish on furniture. The lowest-paying jobs available to working-class London women were matchbox-making, and sorting rags in a rag factory, where flea- and lice-ridden rags were sorted to be pulped for manufacturing paper.Needlework was the single largest paid occupation for women working from home, but the work paid little, and women often had to rent sewing machines that they could not afford to buy. These home manufacturing industries became known as "sweated industries". The Select Committee of the House of Commons defined sweated industries in 1890 as "work carried on for inadequate wages and for excessive hours in unsanitary conditions". By 1906, such workers earned about a penny an hour.
Women could not expect to be paid the same wage as a man for the same work, despite the fact that women were as likely as men to be married and supporting children. In 1906, the government found that the average weekly factory wage for a woman ranged from 11s 3d to 18s 8d, whereas a man's average weekly wage was around 25s 9d. Women were also preferred by many factory owners because they could be "more easily induced to undergo severe bodily fatigue than men". Childminding was another necessary expense for many women working in factories. Pregnant women worked up until the day they gave birth and returned to work as soon as they were physically able. In 1891, a law was passed requiring women to take four weeks away from factory work after giving birth, but many women could not afford this unpaid leave, and the law was unenforceable.
Throughout the Victorian era, respectable employment for women from solidly middle-class families was largely restricted to work as a school teacher or governess
. Once telephone use became widespread, work as a telephone operator became a respectable job for middle-class women needing employment.
Three medical professions were opened to women in the 19th century: nursing
, midwifery
, and doctoring. However, it was only in nursing, the one most subject to the supervision and authority of male doctors, that women were widely accepted. Victorians thought the doctor's profession characteristically belonged only to the male sex and a woman should not intrude upon this area but stay with the conventions the will of God
has assigned to her. In conclusion, Englishmen would not have woman surgeons or physician
s; they confined them to their role as nurses.
Florence Nightingale
(1820–1910) was an important figure in renewing the traditional image
of the nurse as the self-sacrificing, ministering angel—the 'Lady with the lamp', spreading comfort as she passed among the wounded. She succeeded in modernizing the nursing profession, promoting training for women and teaching them courage, confidence and self-assertion.
s, hoop skirt frames, and heavy fabrics. Because of the impracticality and health impact of the era's fashions, a reform movement
began among women.
The ideal silhouette of the time demanded a narrow waist, which was accomplished by constricting the abdomen with a laced corset
. While the silhouette was striking, and the dresses themselves were often exquisitely detailed creations, the fashions were cumbersome. At best, they restricted women's movements and at worst, they had a harmful effect on women's health. Physicians turned their attention to the use of corsets and determined that they caused several medical problems: compression of the thorax, restricted breathing, organ displacement, poor circulation, and prolapsed uterus.
Articles advocating the reform of women's clothing by the British National Health Society, the Ladies’ Dress Association, and the Rational Dress Society were reprinted in The Canada Lancet, Canada's medical journal. In 1884, Dr. J. Algernon Temple of Toronto even voiced concern that the fashions were having a negative impact on the health of young women from the working classes. He pointed out that a young working class woman was likely to spend a large part of her earnings on fine hats and shawls, while "her feet are improperly protected, and she wears no flannel petticoat or woollen stockings".
Florence Pomeroy, Lady Haberton, was president of the Rational Dress movement in Britain. At a National Health Society exhibition held in 1882, Viscountess Haliburton presented her invention of a "divided skirt", which was a long skirt that cleared the ground, with separate halves at the bottom made with material attached to the bottom of the skirt. She hoped that her invention would become popular by supporting women's freedom of physical movement, but the British public was not impressed by the invention, perhaps because of the negative "unwomanly" association of the style with the American Bloomers
movement. Amelia Jenks Bloomer had encouraged the wearing of visible bloomers
by feminists to assert their right to wear comfortable and practical clothing, but it was no more than a passing fashion itself among radical feminists. The movement to reform women's dress would persist and have longterm success, however; by the 1920s, Coco Chanel
was enormously successful at selling a progressive, far less restrictive silhouette that abandoned the corset and raised hemlines. The new silhouette symbolized modernism for trendy young women and became the 20th century standard. Other Paris designers continued reintroducing pants for women and the trend was gradually adopted over the next century.
Fashion trends, in one sense, travelled "full circle" over the course of the Victorian era. The popular women's styles during the Georgian era
, and at the very beginning of Victoria's reign, emphasized a simple style influenced by flowing gowns worn by women in Ancient Greece and Rome. The Empire waist silhouette was replaced by a trend towards ornate styles and an artificial silhouette, with the restrictiveness of women's clothing reaching its low point during the mid-century passion for narrow corseted waists and hoop skirts. The iconic wide-brimmed women's hats of the later Victorian era also followed the trend towards ostentatious display. Hats began the Victorian era as simple bonnets. By the 1880s, milliners were tested by the competition among women to top their outfits with the most creative (and extravagant) hats, designed with expensive materials such as silk flowers and exotic plumes such as ostrich and peacock. As the Victorian era drew to a close, however, fashions were showing indications of a popular backlash against excessive styles. Model, actress and socialite Lillie Langtry
took London by storm in the 1870s, attracting notice for wearing simple black dresses to social events. Combined with her natural beauty, the style appeared dramatic. Fashions followed her example (as well as Queen Victoria's wearing of mourning black later in her reign).
). Visible minority groups, such as indigenous First Nations
and Chinese labourers, were marginalized and suffered profound discrimination. Women's status was thus heavily dependent upon their ethnic identity as well as their place within the dominant British class structure.
English-speaking Canadian women were pioneers in the early Victorian years. Canada's best-known English authors of the pre-Confederation era were perhaps Catharine Parr Traill
and her sister Susanna Moodie
, middle-class English settlers who published memoirs of their demanding lives as pioneers. Traill published The Backwoods of Canada (1836) and Canadian Crusoes
(1852), and Moodie published Roughing it in the Bush
(1852) and Life in the Clearings (1853). Their memoirs recount the harshness of life as women settlers, but were nonetheless popular.
Upper-class Canadian women emulated British culture and imported as much of it as possible across the Atlantic. Books, magazines, popular music, and theatre productions were all imported to meet women's consumer demand.
Upper-class women supported philanthropic causes similar to the educational and nursing charities championed by upper-class women in England. The Victorian Order of Nurses
, still in existence, was founded in 1897 as a gift to Queen Victoria to commemorate her Diamond Jubilee
. The Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire
, founded in 1900, supports educational bursaries and book awards to promote Canadian patriotism, but also to support knowledge of the British Empire. Both organizations had Queen Victoria as their official patron. One of the patrons of Halifax's Victoria School of Art and Design (founded in 1887 and later named the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design) was Anna Leonowens
. Women began making headway in their struggle to gain access to higher education: in 1875, the first woman university graduate in Canada was Grace Annie Lockhart
(Mount Allison University
). In 1880, Emily Stowe
became the first woman licensed to practice medicine in Canada.
Women's legal rights made slow progress throughout the 19th century. In 1859, Upper Canada passed a law allowing married women to own property. In 1885, Alberta passed a law allowing unmarried women who owned property gained the right to vote and hold office in school matters.
Women's suffrage would not be achieved until the World War I period. Suffrage activism began during the later decades of the Victorian era. In
1883, the Toronto Women's Literary and Social Progress Club met and established the Canadian Women's Suffrage Association
.
Gender equality
Gender equality is the goal of the equality of the genders, stemming from a belief in the injustice of myriad forms of gender inequality.- Concept :...
in the Victorian era
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
is often seen as an illustration of the striking discrepancy between the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
's national power and wealth and what many, then and now, consider its appalling social conditions. During the era symbolized by the reign of British monarch
Monarch
A monarch is the person who heads a monarchy. This is a form of government in which a state or polity is ruled or controlled by an individual who typically inherits the throne by birth and occasionally rules for life or until abdication...
Queen Victoria
Victoria of the United Kingdom
Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
, women did not have suffrage rights, the right to sue, or the right to own property. At the same time, women participated in the paid workforce in increasing numbers following the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
. Feminist ideas spread among the educated female middle classes, discriminatory laws were repealed, and the women's suffrage
Women's suffrage
Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...
movement gained momentum in the last years of the Victorian Era.
"The Angel in the House"
By the Victorian era, the concept of "pater familiasPater familias
The pater familias, also written as paterfamilias was the head of a Roman family. The term is Latin for "father of the family" or the "owner of the family estate". The form is irregular and archaic in Latin, preserving the old genitive ending in -as...
", meaning the husband as head of the household and moral leader of his family, was firmly entrenched in British culture. A wife's proper role was to love, honour and obey her husband, as her marriage vows stated. But far from being considered unimportant, although a wife's place in the family hierarchy was secondary to her husband, a wife's duty to support her husband and properly raise her children were considered crucial cornerstones of social stability by the Victorians. Women seen as falling short of society's expectations were believed to be deserving of harsh criticism. Representations of ideal wives were abundant in Victorian culture, providing women with their role models.
The Victorian ideal of the tirelessly patient, sacrificing wife is depicted in The Angel in the House
The Angel in the House
The Angel in the House is a narrative poem by Coventry Patmore, first published in 1854 and expanded up until 1862. Although largely ignored upon publication, it became enormously popular during the later nineteenth century and its influence continued well into the twentieth...
, a popular poem by Coventry Patmore
Coventry Patmore
Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore was an English poet and critic best known for The Angel in the House, his narrative poem about an ideal happy marriage.-Youth:...
, published in 1854:
The poem became such a touchstone of British culture that in a lecture to the Women's Service League in 1942, Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
said "killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer":
"The Household General"
'The Household General' is a term coined in 1861 by Isabella Beeton in her manual Mrs Beeton's Book of Household ManagementMrs Beeton's Book of Household Management
Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management was a guide to all aspects of running a household in Victorian Britain, edited by Isabella Beeton. It was originally entitled "Beeton's Book of Household Management", in line with the other guide-books published by Beeton.Previously published as a part...
. Here she explained that the mistress of a household is comparable to the commander of an army or the leader of an enterprise. To run a respectable household and secure the happiness, comfort and well-being of her family she must perform her duties intelligently and thoroughly. For example, she had to organize, delegate and instruct her servants, which was not an easy task as many of them were not reliable. Isabella Beeton's upper-middle-class readers may also have had a large complement of "domestics", which created a staff requiring supervision by the mistress of the house. Beeton advises her readers to maintain a "housekeeping account book" to track spending. She recommends daily entries and checking the balance monthly. In addition to tracking servants' wages, the mistress of the house was responsible for tracking payments to trades such as butchers and bakers. If a household had the means to hire a housekeeper, whose duties included keeping the household accounts, Beeton goes so far as to advise readers to check the accounts of housekeepers regularly to ensure nothing was amiss.
Beeton provided a table of domestic servant roles and their appropriate weekly pay scale ("found in livery
Livery
A livery is a uniform, insignia or symbol adorning, in a non-military context, a person, an object or a vehicle that denotes a relationship between the wearer of the livery and an individual or corporate body. Often, elements of the heraldry relating to the individual or corporate body feature in...
" was the expression referring to the employer providing a domestic employee with meals and a work uniform). The sheer number of Victorian servants and their expected duties makes it clear why expertise in logistical matters would benefit the mistress of the house. Beeton indicates that the full list of servants in this table would be expected in the household of a "wealthy nobleman"; her readers are instructed to adjust staff size and pay according to the household's available budget, and other factors such as a servant's level of experience:
| Servant's position (Male domestics) | When not found in livery | When found in livery |
|---|---|---|
| House Steward | ₤10-₤80 | - |
| Valet | ₤25-₤50 | ₤20-₤30 |
| Butler | ₤25-₤50 | - |
| Cook | ₤20-₤40 | - |
| Gardener | ₤20-₤40 | - |
| Footman | ₤20-₤40 | ₤15-₤25 |
| Under Butler | ₤15-₤30 | ₤15-₤25 |
| Coachman | - | ₤20-₤35 |
| Groom | ₤15-₤30 | ₤12-₤20 |
| Under Footman | - | ₤2-₤20 |
| Page or Footboy | ₤8-₤18 | ₤6-₤14 |
| Stableboy | ₤6-₤12 | - |
| Servant's position (Female domestics) | When no extra allowance is made for tea, sugar and beer | When an extra allowance is made for tea, sugar and beer |
| Housekeeper | ₤20-₤45 | ₤18-₤40 |
| Lady's-maid | ₤12-₤25 | ₤10-₤20 |
| Head Nurse | ₤15-₤30 | ₤13-₤26 |
| Cook | ₤11-₤30 | ₤12-₤26 |
| Upper Housemaid | ₤12-₤20 | ₤10-₤17 |
| Upper Laundry-maid | ₤12-₤18 | ₤10-₤15 |
| Maid-of-all-work | ₤9-₤14 | ₤7 10s.-₤11 |
| Under Housemaid | ₤8-₤12 | ₤6 10s.-₤10 |
| Still-room maid | ₤9-₤14 | ₤8-₤13 |
| Nursemaid | ₤8-₤12 | ₤5-₤10 |
| Under Laundry-maid | ₤9-₤11 | ₤8-₤12 |
| Kitchen-maid | ₤9-₤14 | ₤8-₤12 |
| Scullery-maid | ₤5-₤9 | ₤4-₤8 |
"The Household General" was expected to organize parties and dinners to bring prestige to her husband, also making it possible for them to network. Beeton gives extensively detailed instructions on how to supervise servants in preparation for hosting dinners and balls. The etiquette to be observed in sending and receiving formal invitations is given, as well as the etiquette to be observed at the events themselves. The mistress of the house also had an important role in supervising the education of the youngest children. Beeton makes it clear that a woman's place is in the home, and her domestic duties come first. Social activities as an individual were less important than household management and socializing as her husband's companion. They were to be strictly limited:
Advice books on housekeeping and the duties of an ideal wife were plentiful during the Victorian era, and sold well among the middle class. In addition to Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, there were Infant Nursing and the Management of Young Children (1866) and Practical Housekeeping; or, the duties of a home-wife (1867) by Mrs. Frederick Pedley, and From Kitchen to Garret by Jane Ellen Panton, which went through 11 editions in a decade. Shirley Forster Murphy a doctor and medical writer, wrote the influential Our Homes, and How to Make them Healthy (1883), before he served as London's chief medical officer in the 1890s.
Working-class domestic life
Domestic life for a working-class family was far less comfortable. Legal standards for minimum housing conditions were a new concept during the Victorian era, and a working-class wife was responsible for keeping her family as clean, warm, and dry as possible in housing stock that was often literally rotting around them. In London, overcrowding was endemic in the slums inhabited by the working classes. Families living in single rooms were not unusual. The worst areas had examples such as 90 people crammed into a 10-room house, or 12 people living in a single room (7 feet 3 inches by 14 feet). Rents were exhorbitant; 85 percent of working-class households in London spent at least one-fifth of their income on rent, with 50 percent paying one-quarter to one-half of their income on rent. The poorer the neighbourhood, the higher the rents. Rents in the Old Nichol area near Hackney, per cubic foot, were four to ten times higher than rents in the fine streets and squares of West End London. The owners of the slum housing included peers, churchmen, and investment trusts for estates of long-deceased members of the upper classes.Domestic chores for women without servants meant a great deal of washing and cleaning during the Victorian era. Coal-dust from stoves (and factories) was the bane of the Victorian woman's housekeeping existence. It coated windows (carried by wind and fog), clothing, and furniture and rugs inside the home. Washing clothing and linens would usually be done one day a week, scrubbed by hand in a large zinc or copper tub. Some water would be heated and added to the wash tub, and perhaps a handful of soda to soften the water. Curtains were taken down and washed every fortnight
Fortnight
The fortnight is a unit of time equal to fourteen days, or two weeks. The word derives from the Old English fēowertyne niht, meaning "fourteen nights"....
; they were often so blackened by coal smoke that they had to be soaked in salted water before being washed. Scrubbing the front wooden doorstep of the home every morning was also an important chore to maintain respectability.
Domestic violence and abuse
The law regarded men as persons, and legal recognition of women's rights as automonous persons would be a slow process, and would not be fully accomplished until well into the 20th century (in Canada, women achieved legal recognition through the "Persons Case", Edwards v. Canada (Attorney General)Edwards v. Canada (Attorney General)
Edwards v. Canada [1930] A.C. 124 – also known as the Persons Case – is a famous Canadian and British constitutional case where it was first decided that women were eligible to sit in the Canadian Senate...
in 1929). Women lost the rights to the property they brought into the marriage, even following divorce; a husband had complete legal control over any income earned by his wife; women were not allowed to open banking accounts; and married women were not able to conclude a contract
Contract
A contract is an agreement entered into by two parties or more with the intention of creating a legal obligation, which may have elements in writing. Contracts can be made orally. The remedy for breach of contract can be "damages" or compensation of money. In equity, the remedy can be specific...
without her husband's legal approval. These property restrictions made it difficult or impossible for a woman to leave a failed marriage, or to exert any control over her finances if her husband was incapable or unwilling to do so on her behalf.
Domestic violence towards wives was given increasing attention by social and legal reformers as the 19th century continued. The first animal-cruelty legislation in Britain was passed in 1824, however, legal protection from domestic violence was not granted to women until 1853 with the Act for the Better Prevention and Punishment of Aggravated Assaults upon Women and Children. Even this law did not outright ban violence by a man against his wife and children; it imposed legal limits on the amount of force that was permitted.
Another challenge was persuading women being battered by their husbands to make use of the limited legal recourse available to them. In 1843, an organization founded by animal-rights and pro-temperance activists was established to help this social cause. The organization that became known as the Associate Institute for Improving and Enforcing the Laws for the Protection of Women and Children hired inspectors who brought prosecutions of the worst cases. It focused its efforts on work-class women, since Victorian practise was to deny that middle-class or aristocratic families were in need of such intervention. There were sometimes cracks in the facade of propriety. In 1860, Mr. J. Walter, MP for Berkshire
Berkshire
Berkshire is a historic county in the South of England. It is also often referred to as the Royal County of Berkshire because of the presence of the royal residence of Windsor Castle in the county; this usage, which dates to the 19th century at least, was recognised by the Queen in 1957, and...
, stated in the House of Commons that if members "looked to the revelations in the Divorce Court they might well fear that if the secrets of all households were known, these brutal assaults upon women were by no means confined to the lower classes". A strong deterrent to middle-class or aristocratic wives seeking legal recourse, or divorce, was the social stigma and shunning that would follow such revelations in a public trial.
Divorce
Great changes in the situation of women took place in the 19th century, especially concerning marriageMarriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
laws and the legal rights of women to divorce and/or gain custody of children. The situation that fathers always received custody
Child custody
Child custody and guardianship are legal terms which are used to describe the legal and practical relationship between a parent and his or her child, such as the right of the parent to make decisions for the child, and the parent's duty to care for the child.Following ratification of the United...
of their children, leaving the mother without any rights, slowly started to change. The Custody of Infants Act
Custody of Infants Act 1839
Custody of Infants Act of 1839 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.The bill was greatly influenced by the reformist opinions of Caroline Norton. Mrs. Norton had a failed marriage with a violent husband. Her pamphlets arguing for the natural right of mothers to have custody of their...
in 1839 gave mothers of unblemished character access to their children in the event of separation
Separation
Separation may refer to:* Separation , the process by which a service member leaves active duty* Separation , rules to minimise the risk of collision between aircraft in flight...
or divorce
Divorce
Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...
, and the Matrimonial Causes Act
Matrimonial Causes Act
The Matrimonial Causes Act is a stock short title used for legislation in the United Kingdom relating to marriage law.-List:* The Matrimonial Causes Act 1857* The Matrimonial Causes Act 1858* The Matrimonial Causes Act 1859* The Matrimonial Causes Act 1860...
in 1890 gave women limited access to divorce. But while the husband only had to prove his wife's adultery
Adultery
Adultery is sexual infidelity to one's spouse, and is a form of extramarital sex. It originally referred only to sex between a woman who was married and a person other than her spouse. Even in cases of separation from one's spouse, an extramarital affair is still considered adultery.Adultery is...
, a woman had to prove her husband had not only committed adultery but also incest
Incest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
, bigamy
Bigamy
In cultures that practice marital monogamy, bigamy is the act of entering into a marriage with one person while still legally married to another. Bigamy is a crime in most western countries, and when it occurs in this context often neither the first nor second spouse is aware of the other...
, cruelty
Cruelty
Cruelty can be described as indifference to suffering, and even positive pleasure in inflicting it. If this is supported by a legal or social framework, then receives the name of perversion. Sadism can also be related to this form of action or concept....
or desertion
Desertion
In military terminology, desertion is the abandonment of a "duty" or post without permission and is done with the intention of not returning...
.In 1873 the Custody of Infants Act extended access to children to all women in the event of separation or divorce. In 1878, after an amendment
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
to the Matrimonial Causes Act, women could secure a separation on the grounds of cruelty and claim custody of their children. Magistrate
Magistrate
A magistrate is an officer of the state; in modern usage the term usually refers to a judge or prosecutor. This was not always the case; in ancient Rome, a magistratus was one of the highest government officers and possessed both judicial and executive powers. Today, in common law systems, a...
s even authorized protection orders to wives whose husbands have been convicted of aggravated assault. An important change was caused by an amendment to the Married Women's Property Act in 1884. This legislation recognized that wives were not chattel
Chattel marriage
Chattel marriage refers to a form of marriage in which the husband owned his wife, and any children of their union, in a legal relationship similar to that of slavery. The only meaningful difference was that there were a few legal restrictions to the husband's right to physically abuse or sell his...
, or property belonging to the husband, but an independent and separate person. Through the Guardianship of Infants Act in 1886, women could be made the sole guardian
Legal guardian
A legal guardian is a person who has the legal authority to care for the personal and property interests of another person, called a ward. Usually, a person has the status of guardian because the ward is incapable of caring for his or her own interests due to infancy, incapacity, or disability...
of their children if their husband died. Women slowly had their rights changed so that they could eventually leave their husbands for good. Some notable dates include:
- 1857: violence recognized as grounds for divorce
- 1870: women could keep money they earned
- 1878: entitlement to spousal and child support recognized
Cultural taboos surrounding the female body
The ideal Victorian woman was pure, chaste, refined, and modest. This ideal was supported by etiquette and manners. The etiquette extended to the pretension of never acknowledging the use of undergarments (indeed, they were sometimes generically referred to as "unmentionables"). The discussion of such a topic, it was feared, would gravitate towards unhealthy attention on anatomical details. As one Victorian lady expressed it: "[those] are not things, my dear, that we speak of; indeed, we try not even to think of them". The pretense of avoiding acknowledgement of anatomical realities met with embarrassing failure on occasion. In 1859, the Hon. Eleanor Stanley, wrote about an incident where the Duchess of Manchester moved too quickly while maneuvering over a stile:However, despite the fact that Victorians considered the mention of women's undergarments in mixed company unacceptable, men's entertainment made great comedic material out of the topic of ladies' bloomer
Bloomer
Bloomer may refer to:* Bloomer, a type of loaf of bread - a crusty loaf with rounded ends, and typically with several parallel diagonal slashes across its top* Bloomers , a type of clothing for women...
s, including men's magazines and music hall skits.
Equestrian riding was an exerting pastime that became popular as a leisure activity among the growing middle classes. Many etiquette manuals for riding were published for this new market. For women, preserving modesty while riding was crucial. Breeches and riding trousers for women were introduced, for the practical reason of preventing chafing, yet these were worn under the dress. Riding clothes for women were made at the same tailors that made men's riding apparel, rather than at a dressmaker, so female assistants were hired to help with fittings.
The advent of colonialism and world travel presented new obstacles for women. Travel on horseback (or on donkeys, or even camels) was often impossible to do sidesaddle because the animal had not been "broken" (trained) for sidesaddle riding. Riding costumes for women were introduced that used breeches or zouave
Zouave
Zouave was the title given to certain light infantry regiments in the French Army, normally serving in French North Africa between 1831 and 1962. The name was also adopted during the 19th century by units in other armies, especially volunteer regiments raised for service in the American Civil War...
trousers beneath long coats in some countries, while jodhpur
Jodhpur
Jodhpur , is the second largest city in the Indian state of Rajasthan. It is located west from the state capital, Jaipur and from the city of Ajmer. It was formerly the seat of a princely state of the same name, the capital of the kingdom known as Marwar...
breeches used by men in India were adopted by women. These concessions were made so that women could ride astride a horse when necessary, but they were still exceptions to the rule of riding sidesaddle until after World War I. Travel writer Isabella Bird
Isabella Bird
Isabella Lucy Bird was a nineteenth-century English explorer, writer, and a natural historian.-Early life:Bird was born in Boroughbridge in 1831 and grew up in Tattenhall, Cheshire...
(1831-1904) was instrumental in challenging this taboo. At age 42, she traveled abroad on a doctor's recommendation. In Hawaii, she determined that seeing the islands riding sidesaddle was impractical, and switched to riding astride. She was an ambitious traveller, going to the American West, the Rocky Mountains, Japan, China, Baghdad, Tehran, and the Black Sea. Her written accounts sold briskly.
Women's physical activity was a cause of concern at the highest levels of academic research during the Victorian era. In Canada, physicians debated the appropriateness of women using bicycles:
Victorian morality and sexuality
Women were expected to have sex with only one man, their husband. However, it was acceptable for men to have multiple partners in their life. If women did have sexual contact with another man, they were seen as ruined or fallenFallen woman
The term fallen woman was used to described a woman who has "lost her innocence", that is, fallen from the grace of God. In 19th century Britain especially, the meaning came to be closely associated with the loss or surrender of a woman's chastity...
. Victorian literature and art was full of examples of women paying dearly for straying from moral expectations. Adulteresses met tragic ends in novels such as Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina is a novel by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, published in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger...
by Tolstoy
Tolstoy
Tolstoy, or Tolstoi is a prominent family of Russian nobility, descending from Andrey Kharitonovich Tolstoy who served under Vasily II of Moscow...
, Madame Bovary
Madame Bovary
Madame Bovary is Gustave Flaubert's first published novel and is considered his masterpiece. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life...
by Flaubert, while in Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented, also known as Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, Tess of the d'Urbervilles or just Tess, is a novel by Thomas Hardy, first published in 1891. It initially appeared in a censored and serialised version, published by the British...
, Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...
depicts a heroine punished by her community for losing her virginity before marriage (the result of her being raped). While some writers and artists showed sympathy towards women's subjugation to this double-standard, some works were didactic and reinforced the cultural norm.
Contagious Diseases Prevention Acts
The situation of women perceived as unclean was worsened through the ' First Contagious Diseases Prevention ActContagious Diseases Acts
The Contagious Diseases Acts were originally passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1864, with further alterations and editions made to it in 1866 and 1869. In 1862, a committee was established to inquire into venereal disease in the armed forces; on its recommendation the first...
' in 1864. Women suspected of being unclean were subjected to an involuntary genital examination. Refusal was punishable by imprisonment; diagnosis with an illness was punishable by involuntary confinement to hospital until perceived as cured.
The disease prevention law was only applied to women, which became the primary rallying point for activists who argued that the law was both ineffective and inherently unfair to women. The exams were inexpertly performed by male police, women could be suspected based on little to no evidence, and the exams were painful and humiliating. After two extensions of the law in 1866 and 1869 the unjust acts were finally repealed in 1886. Josephine Butler
Josephine Butler
Josephine Elizabeth Butler was a Victorian era British feminist who was especially concerned with the welfare of prostitutes...
was a women's rights crusader who fought to repeal the Acts.
Education
Women were not freely offered the opportunity to study subjects of an extended, classical, and commercial nature. This made it difficult for a woman to break free from the societal constraints to achieve independent economical status.Education was specialized by gender. Women were provided with the opportunity to study refined subjects such as history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, geography
Geography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
and general literature which would provide them with interesting but noncontroversial topics for discussion.
Despite the restrictions and stigmatization, some women did excel in "male" subjects such as law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
, physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
, engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
, science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
and art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
. These women pioneered the path for the much improved gender equality in modern education in the UK.
Women were rarely given the opportunity to attend university
University
A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
. It was even said that studying was against their nature and could make them ill. They were to stay more or less an "ornament of society."
Working-class employment
Working-class women often had occupations to make ends meet, and to ensure family income in the event that a husband became sick, injured, or died. There was no workers' compensation until late in the Victorian era, and a husband too ill or injured to work often meant an inability to pay the rent and a stay at the dreaded Victorian workhouseWorkhouse
In England and Wales a workhouse, colloquially known as a spike, was a place where those unable to support themselves were offered accommodation and employment...
.
Throughout the Victorian era, some women were employed in heavy industry such as coal mines and the steel industry. Although they were employed in fewer numbers as the Victorian era continued and employment laws changed, they could still be found in certain roles. Before the Mines and Collieries Act 1842, women (and children) worked underground as "hurriers" who carted tubs of coal up through the narrow mine shafts. In Wolverhampton, the law did not have much of an impact on women's mining employment, because they mainly worked above-ground at the coal mines, sorting coal, loading canal boats, and other surface tasks.Women also traditionally did "all the chief tasks in agriculture" in all counties of England, as a government inquiry found in 1843. By the late 1860s, agricultural work was not paying well, and women turned to industrial employment.
In areas with industrial factories, women could find employment on assembly lines for items ranging from locks to canned food. Industrial laundry services employed many women (including inmates of Magdalene asylums who did not receive wages for their work). Women were also commonly employed in the textile mills that sprang up during the industrial revolution in such cities as Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham. Working for a wage was often done from the home in London, although many women worked as "hawkers" or street vendors, who sold such things as watercress, lavendar, flowers or herbs that they would collect at the Spitalfields fruit and vegetable market. Many working-class women worked as washerwomen, taking in laundry for a fee. Animal-breeding in slum flats was common, such as dogs, geese, rabbits and birds, to be sold at animal and bird markets. Housing inspectors often found livestock in slum cellars, including cows and donkeys.Spinning and winding wool, silk, and other types of piecework were a common way of earning income by working from home, but wages were very low, and hours were long; often 14 hours per day were needed to earn enough to survive.. Furniture-assembling and -finishing were common piecework jobs in working-class households in London that paid relatively well. Women in particular were known as skillful "french polishers" who completed the finish on furniture. The lowest-paying jobs available to working-class London women were matchbox-making, and sorting rags in a rag factory, where flea- and lice-ridden rags were sorted to be pulped for manufacturing paper.Needlework was the single largest paid occupation for women working from home, but the work paid little, and women often had to rent sewing machines that they could not afford to buy. These home manufacturing industries became known as "sweated industries". The Select Committee of the House of Commons defined sweated industries in 1890 as "work carried on for inadequate wages and for excessive hours in unsanitary conditions". By 1906, such workers earned about a penny an hour.
Women could not expect to be paid the same wage as a man for the same work, despite the fact that women were as likely as men to be married and supporting children. In 1906, the government found that the average weekly factory wage for a woman ranged from 11s 3d to 18s 8d, whereas a man's average weekly wage was around 25s 9d. Women were also preferred by many factory owners because they could be "more easily induced to undergo severe bodily fatigue than men". Childminding was another necessary expense for many women working in factories. Pregnant women worked up until the day they gave birth and returned to work as soon as they were physically able. In 1891, a law was passed requiring women to take four weeks away from factory work after giving birth, but many women could not afford this unpaid leave, and the law was unenforceable.
Middle-class employment
As education for girls spread literacy to the working-classes during the mid- and late-Victorian era, some ambitious young women were able to find salaried jobs in new fields, such as salesgirls, cashiers, typists and secretaries.Work as a domestic, such as a maid or cook, was common, but there was great competition for employment in the more respectable, and higher-paying, households. Private registries were established to control the employment of the better-qualified domestic servants.Throughout the Victorian era, respectable employment for women from solidly middle-class families was largely restricted to work as a school teacher or governess
Governess
A governess is a girl or woman employed to teach and train children in a private household. In contrast to a nanny or a babysitter, she concentrates on teaching children, not on meeting their physical needs...
. Once telephone use became widespread, work as a telephone operator became a respectable job for middle-class women needing employment.
Three medical professions were opened to women in the 19th century: nursing
Nursing
Nursing is a healthcare profession focused on the care of individuals, families, and communities so they may attain, maintain, or recover optimal health and quality of life from conception to death....
, midwifery
Midwifery
Midwifery is a health care profession in which providers offer care to childbearing women during pregnancy, labour and birth, and during the postpartum period. They also help care for the newborn and assist the mother with breastfeeding....
, and doctoring. However, it was only in nursing, the one most subject to the supervision and authority of male doctors, that women were widely accepted. Victorians thought the doctor's profession characteristically belonged only to the male sex and a woman should not intrude upon this area but stay with the conventions the will of God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
has assigned to her. In conclusion, Englishmen would not have woman surgeons or physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
s; they confined them to their role as nurses.
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale OM, RRC was a celebrated English nurse, writer and statistician. She came to prominence for her pioneering work in nursing during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. She was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night...
(1820–1910) was an important figure in renewing the traditional image
Image
An image is an artifact, for example a two-dimensional picture, that has a similar appearance to some subject—usually a physical object or a person.-Characteristics:...
of the nurse as the self-sacrificing, ministering angel—the 'Lady with the lamp', spreading comfort as she passed among the wounded. She succeeded in modernizing the nursing profession, promoting training for women and teaching them courage, confidence and self-assertion.
Women's leisure activities
Women's leisure activities included in large part many traditional pastimes: reading, embroidery, music, and traditional handicrafts. More modern pursuits were introduced to women's lives during the 19th century, however.Victorian women's fashion
Victorian women's clothing followed trends that emphasized elaborate dresses, skirts with wide volume created by the use of layered material such as crinolineCrinoline
Crinoline was originally a stiff fabric with a weft of horse-hair and a warp of cotton or linen thread. The fabric first appeared around 1830, but by 1850 the word had come to mean a stiffened petticoat or rigid skirt-shaped structure of steel designed to support the skirts of a woman’s dress into...
s, hoop skirt frames, and heavy fabrics. Because of the impracticality and health impact of the era's fashions, a reform movement
Victorian dress reform
During the middle and late Victorian period, various reformers proposed, designed, and wore clothing supposedly more rational and comfortable than the fashions of the time. This was known as the dress reform or rational dress movement...
began among women.
The ideal silhouette of the time demanded a narrow waist, which was accomplished by constricting the abdomen with a laced corset
Corset
A corset is a garment worn to hold and shape the torso into a desired shape for aesthetic or medical purposes...
. While the silhouette was striking, and the dresses themselves were often exquisitely detailed creations, the fashions were cumbersome. At best, they restricted women's movements and at worst, they had a harmful effect on women's health. Physicians turned their attention to the use of corsets and determined that they caused several medical problems: compression of the thorax, restricted breathing, organ displacement, poor circulation, and prolapsed uterus.
Articles advocating the reform of women's clothing by the British National Health Society, the Ladies’ Dress Association, and the Rational Dress Society were reprinted in The Canada Lancet, Canada's medical journal. In 1884, Dr. J. Algernon Temple of Toronto even voiced concern that the fashions were having a negative impact on the health of young women from the working classes. He pointed out that a young working class woman was likely to spend a large part of her earnings on fine hats and shawls, while "her feet are improperly protected, and she wears no flannel petticoat or woollen stockings".
Florence Pomeroy, Lady Haberton, was president of the Rational Dress movement in Britain. At a National Health Society exhibition held in 1882, Viscountess Haliburton presented her invention of a "divided skirt", which was a long skirt that cleared the ground, with separate halves at the bottom made with material attached to the bottom of the skirt. She hoped that her invention would become popular by supporting women's freedom of physical movement, but the British public was not impressed by the invention, perhaps because of the negative "unwomanly" association of the style with the American Bloomers
Bloomers
Bloomers may refer to:* Bloomers , the undergarment named after Amelia Bloomer.* Bloomers , the 1979 BBC sitcom by James Saunders, starring Richard Beckinsale....
movement. Amelia Jenks Bloomer had encouraged the wearing of visible bloomers
Bloomers
Bloomers may refer to:* Bloomers , the undergarment named after Amelia Bloomer.* Bloomers , the 1979 BBC sitcom by James Saunders, starring Richard Beckinsale....
by feminists to assert their right to wear comfortable and practical clothing, but it was no more than a passing fashion itself among radical feminists. The movement to reform women's dress would persist and have longterm success, however; by the 1920s, Coco Chanel
Coco Chanel
Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel was a pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist thought, menswear-inspired fashions, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her an important figure in 20th-century fashion. She was the founder of one of the most famous fashion brands, Chanel...
was enormously successful at selling a progressive, far less restrictive silhouette that abandoned the corset and raised hemlines. The new silhouette symbolized modernism for trendy young women and became the 20th century standard. Other Paris designers continued reintroducing pants for women and the trend was gradually adopted over the next century.
Fashion trends, in one sense, travelled "full circle" over the course of the Victorian era. The popular women's styles during the Georgian era
Georgian era
The Georgian era is a period of British history which takes its name from, and is normally defined as spanning the reigns of, the first four Hanoverian kings of Great Britain : George I, George II, George III and George IV...
, and at the very beginning of Victoria's reign, emphasized a simple style influenced by flowing gowns worn by women in Ancient Greece and Rome. The Empire waist silhouette was replaced by a trend towards ornate styles and an artificial silhouette, with the restrictiveness of women's clothing reaching its low point during the mid-century passion for narrow corseted waists and hoop skirts. The iconic wide-brimmed women's hats of the later Victorian era also followed the trend towards ostentatious display. Hats began the Victorian era as simple bonnets. By the 1880s, milliners were tested by the competition among women to top their outfits with the most creative (and extravagant) hats, designed with expensive materials such as silk flowers and exotic plumes such as ostrich and peacock. As the Victorian era drew to a close, however, fashions were showing indications of a popular backlash against excessive styles. Model, actress and socialite Lillie Langtry
Lillie Langtry
Lillie Langtry , usually spelled Lily Langtry when she was in the U.S., born Emilie Charlotte Le Breton, was a British actress born on the island of Jersey...
took London by storm in the 1870s, attracting notice for wearing simple black dresses to social events. Combined with her natural beauty, the style appeared dramatic. Fashions followed her example (as well as Queen Victoria's wearing of mourning black later in her reign).
Women subjects of the British Empire
Queen Victoria reigned as the monarch of Britains colonies and as Empress of India. The influence of British imperialism and British culture was powerful throughout the Victorian era. Women's roles in the colonial countries were determined by the expectations associated with loyalty to the Crown and the cultural standards that it symbolized.Canada
The upper classes of Canada were almost without exception of British origin during the Victorian era. At the beginning of the Victorian era, British North America included several separate colonies that joined together as a Confederation in 1867 to create Canada. Military and government officials and their families came to British North America from England or Scotland, and less often were of Protestant Irish origin. Most business interests were controlled by Canadians who were of British stock. English-speaking minorities who immigrated to Canada struggled for economic and government influence, including large numbers of Roman Catholic Irish and later Ukrainians, Poles, and other European immigrants. French-Canadians remained largely culturally isolated from English-speaking Canadians (a situation later described in Two Solitudes (novel) by Hugh MacLennanHugh MacLennan
John Hugh MacLennan, CC, CQ was a Canadian author and professor of English at McGill University. He won five Governor General's Awards and a Royal Bank Award.-Family and childhood:...
). Visible minority groups, such as indigenous First Nations
First Nations
First Nations is a term that collectively refers to various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis. There are currently over 630 recognised First Nations governments or bands spread across Canada, roughly half of which are in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. The...
and Chinese labourers, were marginalized and suffered profound discrimination. Women's status was thus heavily dependent upon their ethnic identity as well as their place within the dominant British class structure.
English-speaking Canadian women were pioneers in the early Victorian years. Canada's best-known English authors of the pre-Confederation era were perhaps Catharine Parr Traill
Catharine Parr Traill
Catharine Parr Traill, born Strickland was an English-Canadian author who wrote about life as a settler in Canada.-Biography:...
and her sister Susanna Moodie
Susanna Moodie
Susanna Moodie, born Strickland , was an English-born Canadian author who wrote about her experiences as a settler in Canada, which was a British colony at the time.-Biography:...
, middle-class English settlers who published memoirs of their demanding lives as pioneers. Traill published The Backwoods of Canada (1836) and Canadian Crusoes
Canadian Crusoes
Canadian Crusoes: A Tale of the Rice Lake Plains is a novel by Catharine Parr Traill. Written after The Backwoods of Canada , it is her second Canadian book. It was first published in 1852 by London publisher Arthur Hall, Virtue, and Company...
(1852), and Moodie published Roughing it in the Bush
Roughing it in the Bush
Roughing It in the Bush is an account of life as a Canadian settler by Susanna Moodie. Moodie immigrated to Canada West, near modern-day Peterborough, Ontario during the 1830s. At the suggestion of her editor, she wrote a "guide" to settler life for British subjects considering coming to Canada...
(1852) and Life in the Clearings (1853). Their memoirs recount the harshness of life as women settlers, but were nonetheless popular.
Upper-class Canadian women emulated British culture and imported as much of it as possible across the Atlantic. Books, magazines, popular music, and theatre productions were all imported to meet women's consumer demand.
Upper-class women supported philanthropic causes similar to the educational and nursing charities championed by upper-class women in England. The Victorian Order of Nurses
Victorian Order of Nurses
The Victorian Order of Nurses is a non-profit charitable organization founded in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada on January 29, 1897 created as a gift for Queen Victoria for the purposes of home care and social services. It is registered as a charity the Canada Revenue Agency, charity number...
, still in existence, was founded in 1897 as a gift to Queen Victoria to commemorate her Diamond Jubilee
Diamond Jubilee
A Diamond Jubilee is a celebration held to mark a 60th anniversary in the case of a person or a 75th anniversary in the case of an event.- Thailand :...
. The Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire
Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire
The Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire is a women's charitable organization based in Canada. The club was originally titled the "Federation of Daughters of the British Empire", which was founded by Margaret Clark Murray in 1900...
, founded in 1900, supports educational bursaries and book awards to promote Canadian patriotism, but also to support knowledge of the British Empire. Both organizations had Queen Victoria as their official patron. One of the patrons of Halifax's Victoria School of Art and Design (founded in 1887 and later named the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design) was Anna Leonowens
Anna Leonowens
Anna Leonowens was an English travel writer, educator, and social activist. She worked in Siam from 1862 to 1868, where she taught the wives and children of Mongkut, king of Siam. She also co-founded the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design...
. Women began making headway in their struggle to gain access to higher education: in 1875, the first woman university graduate in Canada was Grace Annie Lockhart
Grace Annie Lockhart
Grace Annie Lockhart was the first woman in the British Empire to receive a Bachelor's degree. She received a Bachelor of Science. She formally enrolled in Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada in 1874 and graduated with a degree of Bachelor of Science and English Literature...
(Mount Allison University
Mount Allison University
Mount Allison University is a primarily undergraduate Canadian liberal arts and science university situated in Sackville, New Brunswick. It is located about a half hour from the regional city of Moncton and 20 minutes from the Greater Moncton International Airport...
). In 1880, Emily Stowe
Emily Stowe
Dr. Emily Howard Stowe was the first female doctor to practice in Canada, and an activist for women's rights and suffrage. Emily Stowe was born in Norwich Township, Oxford County, Ontario...
became the first woman licensed to practice medicine in Canada.
Women's legal rights made slow progress throughout the 19th century. In 1859, Upper Canada passed a law allowing married women to own property. In 1885, Alberta passed a law allowing unmarried women who owned property gained the right to vote and hold office in school matters.
Women's suffrage would not be achieved until the World War I period. Suffrage activism began during the later decades of the Victorian era. In
1883, the Toronto Women's Literary and Social Progress Club met and established the Canadian Women's Suffrage Association
Canadian Women's Suffrage Association
The Canadian Women's Suffrage Association was originally called the Toronto Women's Literary Guild as a screen for suffrage activities: in effect, its members worked undercover. The Guild, founded in 1877, was renamed in 1883 as the Toronto Women's Suffrage Association...
.