The Public Spheres Of British Victorian Society Essay

Toward the late 19th century, as more and more women began entering the workforce and emerging from the home, into the

Before 1840 women were viewed as something that needed to be taken care of. They could not own property, fathers would not mention their daughters in their wills, women could not be treasurer of their own companies, it was the husband’s responsibility. Only seven vocations were available to them outside of the home in the late 1840’s; widows would receive no share of her husband’s property or his families, and if one did not marry or remarry she had to enter one of the few employments for her or be a charity case for her relatives. When factory jobs became available to women they were quickly taken because it gave women a way to be independent and not a burden to their loved ones, but earn and spend their own money however the wished. For once

Women during the age of Industrialization in Britain conceded and proclaimed a more noticeable system of equality. As women protested for more rights, occupational opportunities, and increased wages, they drastically alternated their lives. As more women were working in factories, the differences in the lives of men and women decreased. Urbanization played a considerable role in the development of Industrial Britain. In certain conditions women were still separate as they had distinctive jobs, pay, and were still expected to do the tasks at home, all the while in atrocious conditions that were not always sympathized, but more overlooked.

The male commissioners that observed the working environment came from the middle class whereas the women that gave testimonies belonged to the working class. The sexualization of women created a vision of an ideal woman. This “ideal” woman came from the middle class, wholly embodied her gender, and was a total image of domesticity. Working class women did not meet the standard of femininity that the male observers expected, leaving them horrified. This class conflict also helps to explain which accounts of work in the nineteenth stand as the most accurate

Prior to the First World War, the jobs men and women held were based primarily on societal constructions of gender: men typically had free choice of their profession and the direction they went hinged largely on their social standing whereas women in the workforce were segregated to work in very specific fields. These fields were largely based on the roles women traditionally held in the home including: housework and textiles. In Great Britain , for example, the majority of the approximately 1.7 million women working most worked in the clothing, textile and house work industries. There were the few who challenged societal expectation, however women were generally required to remain within the spheres of domesticity.

Thus where there were men in jobs before, there was nobody and with that women flowed into factories and offices, taking over jobs previously thought that only men could do (Palmer, Colton, p.719).

Around the beginning of the 20th century men and women had very specific gender roles. Women in the past were usually looked at as the homemaker types. Very few women had jobs of any type during this

During the long nineteenth century, political revolutions, industrialization, and European imperialism resulted in dramatic changes in the role of women in Western Europe and Eastern Asia. As industrialization spread in Western Europe, women were no longer able to fulfill their dual role as a mother and a worker. After the introduction of industrialization, laborious tasks were moved from the household to factories and women were forced to choose either the life of a mother or the life of a worker. Women who chose to leave their households were subjected to harsh conditions, low wages, and long hours. The majority of married and middle-class women were confined to the home, and deprived of an education and civil rights. Unlike the

Social standing, and moral values were vital elements in Victorian society, and the fundamental doctrine of establishing this ideology, began at home. The home provided a refuge from the rigour, uncertainty, anxiety, and potential violence of the outside world. (P, 341) A woman’s role was to provide a safe, stable, and well-organised environment for their husbands and families. However, change was on the horizon with an underlying movement of business and domestic changes both home and abroad, with industrialization, and the suffragist movement. Women were beginning to gain autonomy and began to grasp their opportunities, thus significantly curtailing male supremacy and the definable acceptable ‘role’ of the woman.

During Britain’s Industrial Revolution, a multitude of different jobs were opened to the working class of men, women, and children. While this era offered a wide variety of new opportunities for everyone, women were somewhat excluded in areas such as occupation availability and wage due to the cultural norms of the time period.

The Victorian Period was a great influence to the authors who composed novels at that time where distinctions between social classes as well as between men and women were strongly marked. During this period, it was precisely a woman who ruled. Alexandrina Victoria who was born on May 24, 1819 became Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from June 20, 1837 until her death on January 22, 1901. Victoria’s reign was one of the longest of a female in history. At only the age of 18, after her uncle William Henry IV died, she began a span of 63 years of reign. In spite of her independence and power, Victoria fell into a deep depression when her husband died in 1861 and ever since she wore black every day for the rest of her

In the Victorian era, the status of women in society was extremely oppressive and, by modern standards, atrocious. Women had few rights, in or outside of the home. Married women in this period relied on men almost completely as they had few rights or independence. With this mindset in focus,

Despite being under the rule of a female monarch, women faced many inequalities and suffering during the Victorian age. Examples of these inequalities include not having the right to vote, unequal educational and employment opportunities. Women were even denied the legal right to divorce in most cases. As the Norton Anthology states, these debates over women’s rights and their roles came to be known as the “woman question” by the Victorians. This lead to many conflicting struggles, such as the desire by all for women to be educated, yet they are denied the same opportunities afforded to men. While these women faced these difficulties, there was also the notion that women should be domestic and feminine. There was an ideal that women should be submissive and pure because they are naturally different. The industrial revolution introduced women into the labor workforce, but there was still a conflict between the two identities; one of an employed woman, and one of a domestic housewife.

great prosperity in Great Britain's literature. The Victorian Age produced a variety of changes. Political and social reform produced a variety of reading among all classes. The lower-class became more self-conscious, the middle class more powerful and the rich became more vulnerable. The novels of Charles Dickens, the poems of Alfred,

In Victorian England, “the bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation” (Engels). This upper middle class, the bourgeois, was divided into separate spheres determined by their “natural characteristics” such as being male or female (Gender 1). The bourgeois society’s main concern was their outward appearance and materialism while gaining respectability among their social class. A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, criticizes Victorian bourgeois society and their strict adherence to gender roles. As Nora Helmer walked away from her family, she generated a “door slam heard around the world” (“A Doll’s House” 1).