Victorian Expectations on Women & Morality

In my last post, I discussed one of the issues that is integral to studying and understanding Victorian society—the Woman Question. Queen Victoria herself embodied the delicate balance of a woman’s role in society as she fulfilled the duties of not only the angel in the house as a wife and mother to nine children, but also the political duties of being Queen of the fastest growing empire at the time.

Sarah Stickney Ellis, 1799-1872

Sarah Stickney Ellis, who we might call the poster-child for the position that women were the angel in the house, was a prolific writer on the issue. She has been credited with implementing the “doctrine of separate spheres” – or the concept that women and men have specific spheres of influence, men in the public sphere and women in the private sphere and the two do not, nor should they according to Ellis, cross over.   Ironically, despite her own success as a writer, Ellis enforced the idea that women ought to repress their own ambitions and dreams to serve others—primarily the male members in their household. She articulates this idea in her book, The Women of England, Their Social Duties, and Domestic Habits (1839):

How much more generous, just, and noble, would it be to deal fairly by woman in these matters, and to tell her that to be individually, what she is praised for being in general, it is necessary for her to lay aside all her natural caprice, her love of self-indulgence, her vanity, her indolence—in short, her very self—and assuming a new nature, which nothing less than watchfulness and prayer can enable her constantly to maintain, to spend her mental and moral capabilities in devising means for promoting the happiness of others, while her own derives a remote and secondary existence from theirs.

While I will be the first to attest that there is a level of selflessness that comes with the territory of motherhood, that does not nor should it take value away from the woman as an individual and her intellectual faculties and personal aspirations, as Ellis suggests. Furthermore, Ellis suggests that women have a higher standard of morality because of their lack of exposure to the outside world that mars the morality of their husbands and sons; and as such their level of influence in the home holds the weight of being the moral compass for each member of the family. Let’s look at what Ellis says when she writes,

The women of England, possessing the grand privilege of being better instructed than those of any other country in the minutae of domestic comfort, have obtained a degree of importance in society far beyond what their unobtrusive virtues would appear to claim. The long-established customs of their country have placed in their hands the high and holy duty of cherishing and protecting the minor morals of life, from whence springs all that is elevated in purpose, and glorious action. The sphere of their direct personal influence is central, and consequently small; but its extreme operations are as widely extended as the range of human feeling…

A proper female's education on her domestic duties, from The Daughter's of England, 1842

Thus what Ellis portrays as the domestic sphere of women is not only the space for domestic comfort but also the space that directs the morality for the family. This expectation of women and their power and influence in the home is taken on by John Ruskin, who writes that, home is “the woman’s true place and power” and that in order to fulfill such a high calling,

John Ruskin, 1819-1900

She must be enduringly, incorruptibly good; instinctively, infallibly wise—wise, not for self-development, but for self-renunciation: wise, not that she may set herself above her husband, but that she may never fail from his side: wise, not with narrowness of insolent and loveless pride, but with the passionate gentleness of an infinitely variable…modesty of service…

These high expectations of women in the home lead Ruskin to a dramatic conclusion:

There is not a war in the world, no, nor an injustice, but you women are answerable for it; not in that you have provoked, but in that you have not hindered. Men, by their nature, are prone to fight; they will fight for any cause, or for none. It is for you to choose their cause for them, and to forbid them when there is no cause. There is no suffering, no injustice, no misery in the earth, but the guilt of it lies lastly with you.

Though we can certainly (and rightly) argue that Ruskin’s drastic conclusion is an unfair burden to place on the shoulders of women, we have to look at the overall argument that begins with Ellis, and see Ruskin’s statement as the inevitable conclusion to that kind of thinking.

 Home is the proper place of power and influence for women. From Wives of England, 1839.

If women are inherently moral and good, and their place of power is solely in the home, then it is chiefly their responsibility to pass on their goodness and morality to their children while they are young and impressionable. And if women don’t achieve this – their one mission – then the result is a generation of growing boys who have not been instilled with a moral compass – the voice of their mother in their ears telling them the difference between right and wrong. And when that growing boy enacts an injustice on someone else, it is not his fault, because he was never taught that it was wrong. No, the fault must lie with the Mother who failed to instill a sense of justice in her son.

How can women bear such a weight of expectation?  How did women writers grapple with this in their female characters? Have we changed our expectations of women today? Or are women just as hard on themselves and place impossible expectations on themselves?

I think about the blogging moms and effect of Pinterest on women today – how we still like to project the image that we have it all together: the beautifully decorated house, the crafty DIY projects, the perfectly stylish and well-behaved children, the meticulously prepared dinner, etc. Who puts these pressure on us today? Is it still our society or do we expect such perfection from ourselves?

I would love to hear your thoughts & comments!

Next up! A poetry reading of, “The Angel in the House.” A look at the poem that started it all…

Victoria and The Woman Question

As I mentioned in my brief bio, one of the reasons for this blog is that I want to continue what I began in my graduate program of English literature with the study of Victorian lit. I graduated nearly six months ago, and I suppose you could say that I miss it already. Perhaps my nostalgia for school is also somewhat due to the fact that my school loan bills are now swiftly coming in; nevertheless, I am one of those people who *loves* everything about being in school and now that I am no longer a student, I find myself longing for intellectually-stimulated reflection and discussion about literature.

Without further ado...

The Victorian Era of course refers to the time period in which Queen Victoria reigned in England from 1837, when she was just eighteen, to her death in 1901.  She married Prince Albert in 1840 and thus began the proliferation of her image as the domestic empress, which co-joined her role as wife and mother in her private life with her public role as Queen of the British Empire.

Franz Xavier Winterhalter - The Family of Queen Victoria (1846)

This publication of Queen Victoria's image in a place of domestic bliss had a catalytic effect on the British public in its concern with the role of women in the public and private spheres of life. What some people might see as the prudishness or sensible femininity of the Victorian Age is certainly linked to Victoria's domestic tendency as she mothered nine children and was very dedicated to her devoted husband. Thus what has come to be known as the "Woman Question" was a topic perhaps inspired by Victoria's somewhat contradictory role as monarch and mother. The early beginnings of the Woman's Rights Movement began back in the Romantic period with Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1759). A century later, however, the role of women was as controversial as ever. With authors such as Sarah Stickney Ellis, who argued for women's natural inferiority and believed that femininity was the backbone of all morality ("The Women of England, their Social Duties, and Domestic Habits,"1839), and John Ruskin, who wrote in his essay, "Of Queen's Gardens" (1864), that women should be educated only to the extent that they can hold engaging conversations with men, women were bound to the private sphere and their domestic role as "angels in the house." On the other end of the spectrum, John Stuart Mill provided insight into this overt suppression of women in his essay, "The Subjection of Women" (1869), in which he argues that men are not even aware of women's full potential because they have never been free to pursue it. 

Yet through this debate over women's proper role in society, Victoria provided perhaps a paradoxical image. On the one hand, the constant portrayals of her with her family uphold her image as the ideal "angel in the house," a woman content with her role in domesticity. Yet, she is simultaneously the Queen of the fastest growing empire on the earth at the time. Her rule saw much social and economic upheaval, and she and Prince Albert passed many reforms which aimed to improve working conditions and protect the rights of the poor working class. Not to mention this was also the height of British Imperialism, which included Victoria being crowned the Empress of India and extending the British Empire to countries as far-reaching as Malaysia, Australia, parts of Africa, and the West Indies. This precarious balance between femininity in the private sphere and power in the public sphere is perhaps the tight-rope walk that Victoria had to perform during her rule, and it sets the stage for the debates and differing opinions on the role of women that proliferated in twentieth century England. 

Queen Victoria herself hints at this struggle with her image in a letter to her daughter, Victoria, in 1858 in which she admonishes her daughter, who had just had her first baby, not to focus too much attention on her new role as mother that would cause her to, "neglect [her] other greater duties," for, she writes, "No lady, and still less a Princess, is fit for her husband or her position, if she does that." Yet later in the same letter, the Queen regrets the fact that her duties as ruler hinder her from visiting her daughter and new grandchild. She writes,

I cannot bear to think Bertie [Prince Albert] is going to you and I can't--and when I look at the baby things, and I feel I shall not be, where every other mother is--and I ought to be and can't--it makes me sick and almost frantic. Why in the world did you manage to choose a time when we could not be with you?   

These seeming contradictions suggest that Victoria struggled with her desire to be a mother and grandmother in a place of domesticity and and her dedication to her position as Queen. Later, after her husband died, she seemed more exhausted with this constant battle in her life. In 1872, she writes,

The higher the position the more difficult it is. --And for a woman alone to be head of so large a family and at the same time reigning Sovereign is I can assure you almost more than human strength can bear. I assure you I feel so done by the amount of work and interruption all day long that it affects my health and also my spirits very much at times. I feel so disheartened. I should like to retire quietly to a cottage in the hills and rest and see almost no one. As long as my health and strength will bear it--I will go on--but I often fear I shall not be able for many years (if I live). 

Just as Victoria wrote about her personal struggle with her dual roles in the public and private sphere, many other Victorians turned to the pen to engage in this topic, which turned it into a very public debate. With the advent of newspapers and journals in the nineteenth century, and the dawn of the age of the novel in the twentieth, writers could find publication rather easily and they took advantage of these literary platforms to engage in the social discussions of the day. Many of these writers were women, some under pseudonyms so they could publish more freely, but regardless of sex, it seems everyone had (and published) an opinion. So we will next take a look at some of these texts to see how they were engaging in the debate on the Woman Question in Victorian culture. 

Feel free to post comments if you had anything to add or any questions! Of course, this is a very brief overview of the Woman Question and Victoria's contribution to it through her letters. There is a wealth of information out there, and I will be the first to say I have not read it all. I am by no means an expert, just an avid learner :) 

If you are wondering where some of my information came from, like any good student, here is my works cited list:

1. The Victorian Web - www.victorianweb.org - This is a fabulous site, one that I used often in grad school and that I will probably refer to a lot in this blog. It is a treasure house of articles and information about the Victorian Era. 

2. Introduction. The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume 2B, The Victorian Age. Eds. Heather Henderson and William Sharpe. New York: Pearson, 2006. 

3. "Letters to Her Daughter, The Princess Royal." Victorian Prose: An Anthology. Eds. Rosemary J. Mundhenk and LuAnn McCracken Fletcher. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. 270-271.