Essay about Women and Men of the Victorian Era

The world today consists of children roaming the streets, technology taking over the world, and being able to work wherever you'd like but, could you imagine a life without all these things? Believe it or not there was a time in life where these things were very uncommon to see. This would be known as the victorian era. This time period was between 1837 and 1901. Daily life was very different from now. Health, social classes, and fashion are just three examples of how daily life was different in the victorian era.

Women in the Victorian era were supposed to be passive, pure, and idle; were not to be well educated; and were expected to marry.  Throughout Brontë's novel, Jane Eyre learns the realities of these social expectations and directly and indirectly speaks against them.

During the Victorian period, upper and middle class men and women existed in different spheres of life: the private sphere, and the public sphere. The private sphere, which included taking care of the home, entertaining guests, and raising children was dominated by women. Meanwhile men were superior in the public sphere, where they took part in politics and business. This lead to the archetypes of women being fragile and motherly, controlled by their emotions, and of men being rational and strong. Social norms, supported by laws, viewed women as “relative creatures” that were below men in the natural hierarchy and only defined in reference to men. These two ideas towards women created a gap of equality for women and constricted them to their sphere of domesticity. The suffrage movement, followed by the first and second waves of feminism gave rise to many civil rights for women, narrowing the gap of inequality. The quest for equality continues today, as these two spheres begin to merge, due to the rise in social media and the subsequent decreasing private life, and women gain more influence in the public sphere. While the forms of inequality are different and an issue for both genders, the Victorian ideas are still present and prominent today.

During the early 1800's women were stuck in the Cult of Domesticity. Women had been issued roles as the moral keepers for societies as well as the nonworking house-wives for families. Also, women were considered unequal to their male companions legally and socially. However, women’s efforts during the 1800’s were effective in challenging traditional intellectual, social, economical, and political attitudes about a women’s place in society.

During the Victorian era, gender roles became separated and entered into different spheres that only interacted at specific moments. Women were considered physically weaker yet morally superior to men, which meant that they were best suited to the domestic sphere. Not only

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.

The creation of Dr. Frankenstein is perhaps one of the most eminent monster figures, not only of Gothic horror literature, but also of media in all its forms. The monster made its first appearance in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus. General knowledge of the creature remains widespread, as the familiar monster appears in countless films, books, and other forms of popular media. Less common, however, is knowledge of the social commentary threaded throughout the novel in which this monster first appeared. Within the story, Shelley condemns the prominent post-Napoleonic era bigotries of sexism and racism.

She was quite possibly the exact opposite of the ideal Victorian woman, who was quiet and refined, and tried to avoid causing trouble for her husband. Because of her bad behavior and congenital madness, she finds herself locked in her husband’s attic for 10 years, only able to leave when the woman charged with caring for her becomes intoxicated. She may also show the silencing of women in the Victorian era, as she is never able to give her own account of the events leading up to her marriage and locking away. A final character example for how defying gender roles can have consequences is Jane herself. While she doesn’t necessarily go against her role, she does refuse to marry Rochester when she discovers that he is married, and when discussing it with Rochester she says “All is changed about me, sir; I must change too—there is no doubt of that; and to avoid fluctuations of feeling, and continual combats with recollections and associations, there is only one way—Adele must have a new governess, sir”

Lindsay Safriet Mr. Blackburn English IV 20 Nov 2015 Victorian Era Sexism: Annotated Bibliography "Historical Analysis: Women as the "the Sex" During the Victorian Era. "Historical Analysis: Women as the "the Sex" During the Victorian Era. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.

Works such as The Clear Spirit, Twenty Canadian Women and Their Times demonstrates how authors interpreted and approached these women’s lives to speak to an enlarging sphere of women’s activity that encroached on men’s work. Many of these works thus frame their subject’s life in the balance held between public and private roles and responsibilities. For example, Elizabeth Waterston’s depiction of Lucy Maude Montgomery’s commitment to her duty as a wife while being a prolific Canadian author: “Like most women-writers of her generation she had always had at least two lives: that of a producing artist, and that of conscientious house-keeper.” In short, they made an effort to assure the reader that the increased participation in public spheres would not deprived women of their female prerogatives in the private sphere, such as motherhood and a wifely duty. Their emphasis that there was no conflict between the old notion of womanhood and the new, reflects the broader sentiment of women in the period following the Second World War, particularly related to their opportunity and participation in the paid labour force. As Margaret Andrews summarizes, there was a widespread feeling that “women had much to gain, and nothing to

The ideal woman in Victorian Times epitomized the good and virtuous woman whose live revolved around the domestic sphere of the family and home. She was pious, respectable and busy with no time for idle leisure. Her diligent and evident constant devotion to her husband, as well as to her God. She accepted her place in the sexual hierarchy. Her role was that of a domestic manager: wives and mothers. By the time that the industrial era was well under way in Britain, the ideology that committed the private sphere to the woman and the public sphere of business, commerce, and politics to the man had been widely dispersed. Women had to fight for an education equal to that of men, many struggled for suitable,

The Victorian rich women wore scarves, and nice things. Some rich women even wear pearls, and nice things in there hair. The pearls are good size and they are white, brown, and pink typically are those colors. Even though women were rich they still had to follow the rules and ware a very nice skirt, or long dress. They had to were very nice black shiny high heels. They sometimes wore top hats, and like nice straw hats. The top hats are very tall and there always black.

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,

This develops the idea that her future with this man as a married woman provided a stable lifestyle where she would not have to live by the rigid patterns of society, reinforcing a modern day feminist reader’s view of the expectations and restrictions placed on unmarried women during the Victorian era.

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,